Baptist DISTINCTIVE: An Adam Mykonos Mystery (The Adam Myknonos Mystries)

Baptist DISTINCTIVE By Thomas C
Gillen

An Adam Mykonos
Mystery

Baptist Distinctive by
Thomas C Gillen: Gillen Publications 2014

Copyright: Thomas C
Gillen 2013

To: Marcia. Slim I
love you so much my heart hurts. And for those who planted the seeds that lead
me to salvation. One Soul still does matter. And most of all for God, who so
loved me that Gave His own Son as a ransom for my sins.

Chapter One:

For years later I would wonder if it was the Lord or the
adversary that caused me to pick up the phone that night.
 
Normally, I am pretty firm about not speaking
to any one after ten pm, but my wife was still at work and the still small
voice of worry that lives inside the left corner of my brain made me answer the
ringing intruder.

“Mykonos”
I said while pausing the O’s on the TV.
 
They were losing two zip to the Yankees, which pleased the New Yorker in
me to no end.

“You’re
gonna want to come and meet me at the State Police barracks”, said a silky
voice that I knew far too well.

“No
I am not”, I replied.

There
was a puff of air and in my mind, I could see Christina Denmark blow the short
piece of hair that perpetually hung in front of her eye up and then with a
quick wave of her finger move it over.

“They’ve
arrested Ivy Lexington.” Countered Denmark.

I
was suddenly more awake then I cared to be. “What for?”

“They
claim she killed Joshua and McKenzie.”

If
it had been any one else but Christina I would have figured they were pulling
my leg, but while the Lord had given Christina many gifts:
 
a working sense of humor was not one of them.

“I
should go and be with the family”, I said, not really thinking as I spoke.

I
heard Christina puff once again as she said. “She asked for you as soon as I
got here.”

At
least she had the presence of mind to call an attorney I thought.
 
I let out a sigh that my Irish Mother would
have said was from the West of Ireland and my Albanian father would have called
the Balkans Breathe. “I’m on my way.”

I
stumbled to the bathroom threw some water on my face and reintroduced my teeth
to the toothbrush.
 
I changed from the
shorts and t-shirt I had been wearing to a pair of faded black khakis and a
light green Ralph Lauren shirt. I debated a tie for a heartbeat, it was July in
Maryland and as hot and muggy as one could ask for even at, I glanced at my
watch 11:00PM. My neck, a little on the thick side, as it was did not want the
tie, but I felt that I needed the air of formality, after all the woman was the
wife of my former Pastor and because nothing in life is ever easy,
 
he and his girlfriend were the people she was
accused of killing. So with no small regret, I flipped on a darker green tie
and then threw on an old black sports coat that seemed to have lived on the
hook behind our bedroom door for more years then we had been married.
 

As
I plodded down stairs to the garage I slid on a pair of black and gray
Merrill’s not the most fashionable of shoes but by far the most comfortable.

Before
I started the car I grabbed my cell and called my wife.

“Lighthouse
Diner guiding people to good food since 2007”, said the woman with the most
amazing accent in the world.
 
Rita
Thompson-Mykonos, my ever incredible wife, had been raised by her Jamaican born
parents in the mountains of Western Maryland just outside of Clear Spring; as
such she had much of her Mother and late Father’s thick Jamaican cadence but
also the local blend of West Virginia redneck and Pennsylvanian farmer.

“You’re
stealing the tag line from the church now?” I asked.

Rita
laughed, I could see her big brown eyes light up with glee. “No, at church we
guide people to Christ here we guide them to good food.”

“I
am the bread of life.”
 
I countered.

“And
there is that.” She said with a sigh. “I was just getting out of here, what’s
up?”

I
told her.

“Wowsier”

“Yep”

“I
won’t wait up, but wake me when you get in.”

“Love
you.” I said knowing that it would be far too late when I got home and that I
would let her sleep.

“What’s
not to love? She said, trying to sound light and breezy but already processing
what I had told her. “Be safe.”

It
took me less than ten minutes to reach the Washington County Sherriff’s Office
barracks, what we back in New York would have called central booking.
 
Inside was the swirl of a chaos that I both
loved and loathed.
 
Washington County and
its largest city Hagerstown are not exactly crime free but fall far short of
the Precincts of the NYPD, tonight however there was a buzz of excitement that
just screamed big case. It was not every day that the former wife of a
prominent pastor is arrested for his murder and the murder of his girlfriend,
not in Hagerstown heck not even in New York.
 

I sauntered
over to the front desk.

“Evening
Ray.” I said to the unsmiling deputy who glared at me with the same contempt
that the high school quarterback uses on the nerd picking the wedgie out of his
pants.

“Adam,
whatta ya want? And whatever it is go peddle it somewhere else.” Ray said.

He
was a short squat cop. One of those of the type that even if he were not in
uniform you would know he was a cop. The way he carried himself and the donut
powder on his shirt sleeve would give him away.
 
His contempt for me showed in his eyes and the dismissive wave of his
hand.

I
should in the interest of fairness stop and explain Ray’s dislike for me.
 
Truth is most cops dislike me.
 
Once upon a time, I was one of them, a member
of the NYPD for more than ten years. Then I was arrested on bribery and
corruption charges and did six years in federal prison. Was I guilty? I am a
sinner saved by grace is all I will say. When I got released I was no longer
welcomed nor did I feel at home in my beloved New York. My life as cop was
obviously over and I was at loose ends. Not a good place for an ex-con to be.
 
My baby sister Leda had married a local web
designer in Hagerstown, so I moved, more for something to do than for a
purpose.

That
was six years ago. Nearly five years ago, Leda and her husband guided me to the
Lord and I have never looked back. It sounds like a cliché but Jesus came into
my heart and my life changed. Now I am still rough around the edges, but in my heart
of hearts I know that I know that I know that Jesus died for my sins and that
in His resurrection I am born again.

 
That same year, I opened a small comic
book-sports card store near the Valley Mall and across the street from the
Lighthouse Diner which was, and is, owned and operated by Rita, who attended
church with us at Calvary Baptist, where Joshua had been Pastor.

A
year after the store opened The Lord lead Rita and me to each other and we
married, that was the second best decision I ever made.
 
For a while life was good, the fact that I
was an ex-con and a crooked cop seemed to never register on anyone’s radar,
then last year Christina Denmark, a family friend asked me to help her
investigate an allegation of brutality against an officer of the Hagerstown
P.D. needless to say I am now not a fan favorite around here.

“I’m
looking for Christina.” I said to Ray, trying hard to smile sincerely and
subserviently.

“She
and the preacher killer are down the hall; holding room” Ray was going to say
more but got
 
cut off by a fist slamming
against the top of his desk and an irate cry:

“I
demand to see my Mother.”
 
Said a high
pitched shrill voice that was trying to sound deep and commanding.
 

I
took a step back as Joshua Lexington Jr., continued his harangue of Ray. “You
people have no business keeping me from my mother. Do you have any idea who I
am?”

Ray
and I shared a moment of bounding, as we exchanged the look that only middle
age men can share when someone twenty years younger than us poses the imperial
question ‘do you know who I am.’ Yep kid, we know, you are some little snot-nosed
brat who was in diapers when we were fighting wars, falling in love, building
careers and challenging the world; you’re the tail of end of a story that we do
not even care about and the generation that will dismantled everything we
worked to build. Yep kid, we know who you are.

“Josh,
take it down a step.” I said firmly as I gripped his arm below the elbow.

Joshua
Lexington Jr., shared his father’s piercing blue eyes: but other than that he
was his Mother’s child. Tall and
 
thin,
his face was elongated like a bad caricature of Dick van Dyke,
 
the shirt he wore hung so loose on his
shoulders that the phrase ‘wire coat hangers’ crossed my mind.

“Brother
Mykonos, what are you doing here?”
 
His
voice still held too much disrespect.

“Your
mother asked Christina Denmark to call me.
 
I was just going down to speak to them.”

“I’ll
go with you.” He demanded.

I
did not want him there. He was wound to tight at the moment and would slow down
the process of helping his mother.

I
did one of the things that I tend to do, and often regret, then need to ask
forgiveness for; I made up a new rule.
 
As I did Pastor Joshua’s words “Sometimes it is easier to ask forgiveness
than permission”, rang in my head.

I
did my best to look avuncular.
 
At fifty
with a shaved head and thin mustache and goatee along with my broad shouldered
five foot eleven frame it was actually kind of easy to look like the kid’s
uncle. Though he was a few inches taller than me, his thin frame was puny
compared to my two hundred and twenty some odd pounds and while I was far from
being in the best shape of my life, years as a cop and con had given me a solid
built, there was some fat around the middle and my arms had always tended
towards thin, but my hands were large and my knuckles show the wear of one to
many blows to some poor fool’s face.

 
“No sorry kid, rules say only attorneys and
their staff can go back and see a suspect.” I glanced at Ray and hoped that his
instant dislike of this boy would overrule his long time dislike of me.

Ray
nodded tightly. “Mr. Mykonos is correct. Grab a seat young man I am sure Ms.
Denmark will come and speak with you shortly. Adam, they are in conference room
seventeen, down the hall and hang a right.”

I
stood in place till Josh sulked over to the bench, gave Ray a fast glance of
thank you and headed down the hall.

One
of the most amusing things in the world of political correctness is police
departments calling the room suspects are held in a conference room. They are
interrogation rooms and sixty years ago I would have found Ivy Lexington
handcuffed to a chair while two cops shone a bright light in her face. The
style may have changed but the overall physiological effect of being locked in
a room, even with your attorney is still the same. I told the cop standing
outside the door, who I was and why I was there. He took his keys out and let
me. “Ms. Denmark is expecting you.”

The
two women inside the interrogation room… sorry conference room were a study in
contrast. One was tall, nearly my height, and stately with deep brown eyes and
a prominent noise and chin, her hair was elegantly coffered. She wore a long
black skirt and a deep blue top, over which she had on a small black blazer.
Pearls adorned her ears and her glasses hung from a chain around her neck. Her
shoes my wife would have noted were from nine west.

The
other woman was lucky if her head reached my chest, her mousy blond hair was
badly cut and her bangs hung in front of her eyes, her ears seemed to have been
borrowed from someone else.
 
She wore a
loose fitting sweater and some type of polyester slacks of a color that may
have once been purple. Her glasses, held together by tape, hung from the bridge
of a nose too small for her face. Her sneakers had a noticeable hole in the
side and she looked as if she was perpetually out of air.
 
As she saw me she shot out an elfin hand.

“Adam,
glad you could make it.”

I smiled,
“Wouldn’t miss a party you were throwing Christina.”

“I
am glad the two of you are amused”, Intoned Ivy Lexington, her voice carried
the smell of magnolias and the hint of Faulkner darkness.

“Ivy”,
I said offering her my hand.
 
She shook
it with the same distaste she always had.

“I
recall when you called me Mrs. Lexington.” She imperiously responded.

“I
recall when you were.” I said with a smile.