Nestled below the skyline of Detroit you’ll find Greektown, a few short blocks of colorful bliss, warm people and Greek food. In spite of growing up immersed in the safety of her family and their rich culture, Jill Zannos doesn’t fit in. A Detroit homicide detective, she manages to keep one foot planted firmly in the traditions started by her grandparents, while the other navigates the most devastated neighborhoods in the city she can’t help but love. She is a no nonsense workaholic with no girlfriends, an odd boyfriend who refuses to grow up, and an uncanny intuition, inherited from her mystic grandmother, that acts as her secret weapon to crime solving success. Her story winds around tales of her family and their secret laden history, while she investigates the most despicable murder of her career.
Jill’s father, Gus still lives above the family grocery store. She goes there for breakfast each day, the familiar surroundings and loving attention of her gentle, doting father are in contrast to the awful details of her job. The family meal following her cousin’s wife’s funeral is the setting for a revelation that changes the way Jill and the rest of the family respond to each other from then on.
While the family drama unfolds, Jill and her partner, Albert Wong investigates the murder and torture of Gretchen Parker, a young girl from Dearborn whose naked body was found on the streets of Detroit.
After the case is solved, Jill decides to take a weekend trip to the family vacation house on Lake Michigan where a series of events change the direction of her life.
The Greeks of Beaubien Street is a modern tale of a family grounded in old world, sometimes archaic, tradition, as they seek acceptance in American society. They could be any nationality, but they are Greek.
The series continues with The Princess of Greektown, Christmas in Greektown and A Greektown Wedding.
Targeted Age Group:: Adult
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
In the preface of his wonderful book, My Detroit, Growing up Greek and American in Motor City (Pella Publishing Company, NY, NY, 2006), author Dan Georgakas writes, “…the Greeks who emigrated to America thought their citizenship would change, but not their basic culture. Somehow they would remain Greek, and their children’s children….” I remember, as a young girl, being enthralled with anything that even hinted of Greek. My immediate family was Americanized. But, my grandmother, who I called Bunny, only spoke Greek to her father, my Papou, and to her sisters when my mother and the other non-Greek relatives were present. Bunny worked at keeping the family together. She bought a large, ancient farmhouse in Saugatuck, Michigan and spent a year getting it ready for the extended family to enjoy. We drove in from Dearborn on Friday night and relatives from all over Michigan and the Chicago area would converge. Before the farmhouse existed, I would accompany my grandmother and her friend, Shirley, to spend the weekends with my Papou. He was a well-known poet in his time. The memories of those years are powerfully influential and can still overwhelm my senses; my husband and I moved from New Jersey to live here after our children were grown and I feel close to my Papou as I write in my office, overlooking the woods of West Michigan.
While other Greek families worshiped together, our family ate. I remember my Aunt Zoola making the most phenomenal lamb roasts. The peeled potatoes were baked right in the juices of the lamb and had a leathery exterior, with a fluffy interior. We still talk about how wonderful they were. My father cooked Greek food on the weekends. The times I went with him to the Eastern Market for supplies are moments I hold precious. There was nothing more delicious than my dad’s Greek salad with fresh baked bread from Greektown. After Bunny died, most of our relatives moved to California. The older he got, the more my dad tried to revive some of the traditions that connected the family with our Greek roots. On occasion, Greek friends would come to the house. With these visits, I think it became even more important for him to hang on to some of the Greek ways. For our family, since we didn’t go to the Orthodox Church, that meant Greek food and Greektown. All of the recipes you’ll find in the book are those I learned by watching my parents.
The Greeks of Beaubien Street is a work of fiction. I wanted the family to be more Greek than ours was, so I had to embellish what I knew from growing up in our acclimated home. I realized, just as I was writing this preface, that many situations in the book are the polar opposite of those of my family. Yiayia Eleni in this story is critical and stern. My grandmother was so loving and kind. Although she was known to chase an errant child around the neighborhood with a switch, she never struck me. One of the last things my own mother said to me the day before she died was that I reminded her of Bunny, something I will treasure forever. However, like Jill, I have a “special needs” sibling. In our youth, we referred to her as “mentally retarded”, a term which is now distasteful to most. My parents were pioneers during that time; they brought her home from the hospital and she was mainstreamed into our community. Now in her late fifties, people from the old neighborhood still remember her and ask how she is. My Greek relatives loved her and showered her with affection. The shame and secretiveness embedded in my characters’ responses is foreign to us, thankfully.
I have not been to Dearborn or Detroit in over thirty years. The Detroit in the story is a conglomeration of the city of my childhood (when our mothers felt it was safe for twelve year-olds to take the bus in for shopping) and post-riot Detroit. Although I mention the riots and some of the desecration of the city, I do so only to keep a semblance of contemporary verisimilitude, not to malign.
My memories of Greektown are sketchy, so I relied on aunts and uncles to fill me in on some of the trivia, like the story of the parrot who spoke Greek. My aunt remembers the parrot vividly from visits to Greektown with her father in the late 1940’s. Dan Georgakas also mentions the parrot. For a firsthand view of Greektown, I highly recommend his book. Everything else is a product of my imagination.
How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
I have so many in my head, the trick is to keep from having too many! In The Greeks of Beaubien Street, characters are a conglomeration of people i knew growing up, true characters I’ve met through my lifetime.
Book Sample
THE GREEKS OF BEAUBIEN STREET
by
Suzanne Jenkins
CHAPTER 1
Detective Jill Zannos stood in a darkened corner of the morgue at Detroit City Hospital, waiting for the autopsy of her latest homicide case to begin. She took a notebook out of her shoulder bag and read the facts as they presented themselves, starting with the early morning call she’d received from the precinct. When her cell rang, she had been sound asleep next to the body of her lover. She reached across the giant, snoring Alex in order to get the phone.
“Let it ring,” he grumbled.
“I can’t. I’m on call at seven; it’s probably work,” she said as she climbed over him to get her cell phone out of the charger. “Zannos,” she answered.
“Jill, it’s Jan Grant,” the police dispatcher said. “You have a body en route to DCH.”
“Okay, on my way,” Jill mumbled. She hung up the phone and curled her body against Alex’s side. “You better get up too, before Wasserman calls.” Sam Wasserman was the medical examiner at Detroit City Hospital.
“He can get started with the night shift.” Alex didn’t officially start work until eight.
“Well, you can’t stay here so you’d better get up,” she repeated. It was a sore point with Alex; she wouldn’t give him a key or let him stay in her house alone and the dialogue had been a recurring one in their relationship for many years. “It’s a matter of privacy,” she told him. “What if my dad wants to come by to work on the plumbing? If you’re here, it’ll cause all kinds of problems.” Her dad wouldn’t understand. At just fifty-eight, he was old-country Greek in spite of having been born in Detroit. Unmarried women didn’t have overnight male guests, let alone live-ins, no matter how old they were. “No, I’m sorry; get up.” She smacked his arm. “If I have to get up, you have to too. It’s not fair, sleeping in without me.” She rolled back to her side of the bed. Alex sat up on his side and scratched his head. He loved her and respected her relationship with her father, but he was also lazy and liked to stay in bed until the last possible minute.
“I’m up; I’m up,” he grumbled. “I’ll make coffee. Just for the record, your father would never leave that store of his in the middle of the day. You’d better find another excuse.”
“You’re probably right,” Jill said absently as she got her clothes together, thinking about what was waiting for her. Alex pulled on the sweatpants he had let drop to the floor the previous night. “C’mon, Fred, let’s go out,” he said to their English bulldog, the closest thing to a child either one of them would have as long as they were together. Fred got up and stretched—first his hind legs with his head in the air, then his front legs with his rump up. By the time the two of them went into the hall and down the stairs, Jill was already in the shower.
* * *
Jill walked to her car looking up between skyscrapers. The sun was just starting to come up to the east over the Detroit River, the silhouette of the low buildings of Windsor inky against the turquoise sky. The two-story buildings of Greektown with their brick facades were nestled at the foot of the glass skyscrapers of Jefferson. Detroit was a city of contrasts. She stayed alert as she unlocked the door to her cruiser. Although this neighborhood was safe, it only took one desperate person looking for money to ruin your day. She drove to the hospital under bright streetlights casting an eerie glow. Autopsies were Jill’s least favorite part of being a homicide detective, but she liked going to the hospital. The details she’d need to begin investigating a death would originate there.
The city’s dead came to the morgue for their final examination. Considered the gold standard of hospital morgues in its prime, now the only thing Detroit City Hospital spoke of was decay and unfortunate neglect. Since the riots of 1967, the neighborhood steadily declined to its present, nearly derelict state. Although the mayor and city officials did all they could to protect the one place citizens were guaranteed equal access to health care, for the last few years money was so tight that cuts reached every department, including the morgue. Even so, it was an equalizer; if you were murdered in Detroit, you got the best autopsy available. If the family of the victim could be located immediately, the autopsy wouldn’t start until after the body was viewed. Because of the backlog of bodies in the coolers, this unlucky victim couldn’t wait. It was either now or two days from now, and by then it might be too late to gather crucial information.
While Jill waited, she noticed a strong dead-mouse smell coming from the closet behind her; the pine-scented cleaner generously used to scour all the metal surfaces in the morgue couldn’t hide it. She used her powers of discipline not to comment about the stench while the autopsy got underway. The smell brought back a memory from her childhood in Greektown. She was five years old and could tell before she stepped over the threshold of the family apartment that her grandmother was cooking lambs’ heads. The heads smelled differently than other lamb meat. All family meal preparation took place in the store below the apartment, but since lambs’ heads were a delicacy just for the family, they were baked upstairs. Jill balked immediately, turning to her mother.
“I’m not going in there,” she complained.
“Get moving, little one, before I call for your grandmother,” her mother warned.
“It smells! Gigi’s got heads in there!” But Christina Zannos pushed her daughter through the door.
“Well, they can’t hurt you, so get moving,” she said, once again amused and annoyed that her child was smart for her age but as stubborn as a mule. Jill reluctantly allowed the push, but fled for her room. The vision of the heads propped up on a baking pan with their long snouts and eyeballs intact scared the hell out of her. That a dead-mouse smell in the morgue would evoke the memory of the severed lamb head brought a giggle up into her throat that she fought by concentrating like mad, writing every single thing about the present scene in the morgue.
Alex enjoyed seeing her like this, focused and jotting down notes in a small leather-bound book as the pathologist, Dr. Wasserman, recited his findings. Although a protective mask wasn’t necessary unless you were standing at the table, Jill always wore one as a barrier between her nose and mouth and the morgue. She was very sensitive to smells, and dead bodies smelled bad. This one was no exception; the smell of the body blending with the dead-mouse smell.
The stench was a contradiction. The body lying on the metal table was of a petite, young female who had a beautiful face, a muscular, athletic body, and neatly brushed thick, blond hair. Someone had taken the time to wash her body off too. She was reported missing on Friday by her mother and father, and now it was Monday morning. A group of young boys looking for trouble found her in an alley off of Grand River and Cass shortly after midnight. Sometime between the missing persons report Friday and late last night she’d been murdered.
When Jill Zannos became a detective in the Detroit Police Department’s homicide division, she discovered she had an intense respect for the dead. Once, after walking in on an autopsy where a group of morgue workers were making snide comments about the victim’s body, she exploded, causing a scene but acting as an advocate for the respectful treatment of the decedent. Ever since her arrival, DCH had the reputation of being the most compassionate place to die in the county.
This victim was found nude. The medical examiner collected the foreign matter from her body to be examined later, hoping it would help determine the location of the actual murder. Fingerprints were taken. Once everything was collected from the outside of the body, an external visual exam was done by the medical examiner.
“Help me turn her over, Alex,” Dr. Wasserman asked his assistant. Against his will, Alex had given up and went into work early with Jill. He helped Wasserman roll the victim to her side.
“Whoa!” Alex said.
“Yeah, right,” Wasserman said. “It’s the bullet exit. Come here, Jill.” The detective moved closer to the table. The victim’s back had a large, six-inch cavity blown out between her shoulder blades. “Good lord!” Jill gasped. No matter how many times she saw the gore of murder, it would always momentarily stun her. “Where’s her back?”
“Not only her back, but the contents of her chest, including part of her heart.”
He reached around the victim’s front and pointed to a tiny spot between her breasts. “See this pinprick? It’s the bullet entrance.” The woman had bled to death, the bullet transecting her ascending aorta. Death had been swift, but other things were done to her before the end, torturous and excruciating.
“Any ideas yet what kind of gun it was?” Jill asked.
“Based on her wound, possibly a .40 Smith & Wesson,” Sam said. “It was something powerful.”
“Did you already wash her off?” Jill asked. “There’s no blood on her.” It was a contradiction: the gaping wound without any blood on her skin.
“Not yet,” Alex said. “Someone got to that before us.”
They returned the victim to her back. Dr. Wasserman bent her left leg up to do a cursory vaginal exam and swab for DNA. Once the external exam was complete, they would move internally, starting by cutting her chest open and removing her organs. It was at that juncture that Jill would escape. Blood, organs, saws, and the noise they made were not her jurisdiction.
“I’m leaving,” she announced. “Call me if you find anything, okay?” Her cell phone rang. She pulled off her mask and mumbled something into her cell, writing in her notebook.
“She’s been ID’d. Gretchen Parker,” she said, “from Dearborn. Twenty-six years old. Wonder what she was doing in the city?”
“Hang around for a minute, will you Jill?” Dr. Wasserman asked. Jill replied that she would be in the cafeteria getting coffee. The two often spent time talking about a homicide right after the autopsy; it solidified the facts in their minds.
It was still early in the morning; she would need a lot of coffee to get through the day. Jill walked to the elevator and pushed the up button. She never started obsessing about a homicide until after the autopsy. The scene investigators’ report would make the murder come alive for her, even if the murder itself took place at a different location. She would imagine the scene as it was upon discovery. A group of young boys found this victim. She closed her eyes for a second, visualizing them as they found the naked body of a beautiful, young girl. Were they shocked? Titillated? It would be her responsibility to question the boys. Remembering her dad, she got her phone out again as she stepped off the elevator.
“Papa?” she said when Gus Zannos answered the phone. “I’m going to be late for breakfast this morning.” She listened to him speaking, his voice raised, excited. “Yes, it’s mine alright,” she answered. “I’ll tell you about it when I get there.” Her father had heard about the discovered body on the morning news. She said good-bye and hung up. She had breakfast with her dad every morning at the family grocery store in Greektown, just five minutes from the precinct. But right now she would get coffee from the hospital cafeteria, find a secluded place to wait for Sam Wasserman, and look over her notes from the autopsy.
A strange jittery feeling was beginning in Jill’s body, starting in her abdomen and spreading through her chest and neck. She knew when she tried to talk, her lips would quiver. It was her standard reaction at the beginning of a new case. Someone had met the end of their life at the brutal hand of another. It was her job to find out who committed the murder and, just as importantly as far as she was concerned, why. She’d make sure the prosecutors had all the evidence they needed to put the guilty away as long as possible. Michigan had abolished the death penalty in 1846, and Jill was happy that killing defendants was not the part of the equation she had to work with.
Standing on the coffee line, she did isometric exercises so she wouldn’t explode with anticipation. She’d tighten her ass muscles alternately with her thighs and if she wasn’t careful, she’d look like she was jogging in place while waiting for her turn at the cash register. If she were outside she could do a cartwheel if she wanted, but here she exercised self-control. Around the hospital, she was referred to as “the strange one.” Employees saw the dark-haired detective walking from the morgue, often talking to herself or, worse, paused in the middle of the hallway with her eyes closed. Best not give them any more ammo. Her hands were shaking as she tried to stuff her notebook into her shoulder bag; she steadied them by holding her elbows in close to her body. The cardboard coffee cups were stacked precariously next to the pot and one wrong move would send them scattering all over the place. It had happened before. Fortunately, she was able to get her coffee and sit down before anything catastrophic took place.
Excitement about a case grew gradually for Jill. When the first call came, her curiosity was merely piqued. The dispatcher said “a body” was waiting for her. Nothing more was offered. Not the race, sex, or location. There were early facts about a case that qualified it as a homicide. If a missing-person report was filed with the police department and a dead body fitting the description was found, it was deemed something for the homicide detectives until proven otherwise. If there were obvious indicators of a murder, such as visible bullet or knife wounds or signs of a beating, strangulation, or dismemberment, the homicide division got involved. It was an assumption that could be made without repercussions.
It wasn’t until the scene was visited that the events surrounding the murder would come totally alive for her. She sometimes visualized the crime taking place, the murderer standing over the body, either with his hands around the throat of the victim or wielding a knife, stabbing repeatedly. She often saw the make of the gun if it was a shooting. If the victim was raped, the man in her vision would begin to unzip, but she would shake it away before he could reach into his pants. Then there would be a period of anxiety that Jill would either fight with meditation and exercise, or succumb to with nausea and insomnia.
Despite the anxiety they produced, her visualizations often guided her toward solving the homicide cases she was assigned to. Her boss asked confidingly that if she had any “ideas” about other cases to please speak up. She used caution, however, looking at her ability to visualize the details of a murder as a gift and not exploiting it; she’d pretend when he asked that she didn’t know what he was talking about. She never admitted to anyone out loud that she consulted her psychic intuition to solve cases. Despite her discretion, however, she was still viewed with suspicion by some of her colleagues. One let it be known that he thought she must have an in with organized crime in order to have successfully closed all the cases she had. Her partner said they were secretly in awe of her and jealous of him for having landed a partner who had such amazing crime-solving skills.
The department recently acquired a panoramic 3-D camera that would give the team a detailed record of the area where the body was discovered. Rather than relying on memory or notes, all an officer had to do was pull a videotape out of the file and get a renewed sense of the crime scene. Although Jill would memorize the video, there was nothing like being the first on the scene. Unfortunately, she was not with the team who first saw this body and investigated the area. Their department was too busy to allow the luxury of a start-to-finish investigation; they often overlapped cases so the few detectives available could sleep occasionally. She had to settle for the scan and the report, which she would view as soon as she got back to the precinct. And, although it wasn’t necessary, she would go to the location where the body was found later in the morning.
Finally, Sam Wasserman arrived with a tray holding two large coffees and a plate of chocolate-covered doughnuts. Alex would finish up the autopsy.
“Thanks for waiting, Jill.” Sam sat down and offered her a doughnut. She took one without hesitating. “She’d had intercourse,” he began. “Or maybe I should reword that. She’d had something shoved into her vagina. There wasn’t any semen as far as I could tell; the microscopic report may show differently. But she had a large tear in the posterior introitus.” He crammed half a doughnut into his mouth. “Something bothers me about her besides the obvious. I can’t put my finger on it. She didn’t have one scratch on her, not one mark, outside of the bullet hole. And then this enormous laceration of her vagina. There was no blood present; she, or someone else, cleaned it up. It appeared like a recent injury, maybe yesterday, but it definitely happened several hours before her death. The edges of the wound were already beginning to granulate.” He looked thoughtful, finishing his doughnut and taking a drink of coffee.
“So, she wasn’t dead when it was done to her.” Jill’s anger rising to the surface, increasing at the notion that someone would torture this young woman in such a brutal way, which only deepened her determination to find Gretchen Parker’s killer. Wasserman could see the transformation and stifled the impulse to comment. Jill’s eyes narrowed, her jaw set. He proceeded gently.
“No. And that isn’t all. She was a virgin; remnants of her hymen were present. So, she wasn’t a career girl, unless it was her first day. She also had someone else’s pubic hair on her back and the back of her legs, like she’d been on a dirty bathroom floor; washed off carefully, but placed on the dirty ground. It makes no sense. We’ll get a profile from it, but I don’t know about this.” Wasserman looked at her intently, concerned. “Are you getting anything yet?” They’d worked together for so many years that he was one of the few people who knew she often got a “feeling” about a case that would later result in an arrest.
“Nothing yet, outside of the disgust you’d expect. Maybe after I see the scan,” Jill said. Wasserman looked out into the cafeteria, pushing his chair back and standing up.
“I better get back. I’ve got a backlog. The report should be dictated by this afternoon,” he said.
“Thanks, Sam.” Jill got up too.
“It’s such a waste,” he said, putting his tray on a shelf and taking his second cup of coffee with him.
“Twenty-six years old,” Jill said. They got to the elevator and Jill said good-bye to Wasserman. The fact that someone would brutalize Gretchen Parker, but then take the time to comb her hair and bathe her, would fester in the recesses of her mind.
She’d go see her father before she went to the precinct. It would make things better for a few minutes. They would sit in the back of the grocery and drink the strong coffee he made for her. It took her less than five minutes to get there from the hospital. Greektown was in the middle of everything. When she pulled into the alley behind the store, he was waiting for her at the back door. He watched her get out of her unmarked cruiser and she could see the smile slowly spread across his face. She’d been an officer for almost fifteen years, a detective for ten, yet he reacted as though he had just found out whenever he saw her in that car. He was so proud of her. Anyone who would listen heard the story of his cop daughter. But she worried for her dad. It wasn’t always a popular thing to have someone so close to you in the police force.
Jill had been raised in Greektown. Most Greeks lived in the suburbs of Grosse Pointe and Saint Clair Shores except for Jill’s family and one other family, the Nickopoloses. The Nickopolos family owned a gun store down the street from Gus’ Greek Grocery. Frank and Estelle Nickopolos, their son, little Frank, and Frank Senior’s mother, Dido, lived above the shop, just like the Zannos family did. Dido was blind and looked like a gnome. She stood about four feet six inches tall and was just as wide, and wore black shirtwaist dresses that strained across her ample bosom, with a black babushka on her head, a caricature of Greek womanhood. Frank placed a stool for her outside of the main door and Dido sat on the stool all day, spitting at people as she sensed them passing by her, shaking her cane in their direction. Only serious gun shoppers dared to cross the threshold of the store because it meant being attacked by Dido. Once inside, they then had to tolerate the screaming voice of the family’s parrot who spoke only Greek. He was actually reciting Scriptures, but it sounded like the worst vileness. In spite of, or maybe because of it, Dido’s presence and that of the bird made life more difficult for Jill when she was a small girl. Those people and their damn bird were also Greeks and therefore clumped together. She never felt accepted, even by her own people. Going to school in Corktown didn’t help. Originally populated by the Irish who fled their homeland during the potato famine, now it was a mixed community of Germans, Arabs, and Mexicans. In late summer, Jill and her mother would walk the few blocks to the Woodward Avenue J.L. Hudson store to buy clothes for the new school year. Her classmates wore clothes from Sears and other discount stores, but her mother wanted something better for her daughter. Jill could still see the pretty dresses, patent-leather shoes, frilly slips, and underpants her mother bought her. She’d have everything delivered. Jill remembered the confused look of the deliveryman when he pulled up in front of the grocery store, their apartment right above it. She saw him thinking, How did these gypsies afford all this merchandise from Hudson’s? She might be the best-dressed little girl in her elementary school class, but she was still a Greek. Her parents spoke a foreign language, their food was different, and she looked different from the children she went to school with in Corktown.
The adult Jill continued to feel like an outsider. Alex argued that this was because she was a snob who thought most people weren’t smart enough for her to waste her time with. She was keeping her distance from them, not the other way around.
“Oh, go to hell,” she said. “If I were a snob, why would I be with you?” He laughed at her, their teasing and bickering often a prelude to lovemaking.
“Good point,” he agreed, wrapping his arms around her.
* * *
Gus Zannos had the coffee made and a slice of fresh, crusty bread with olive oil and tomato awaiting, Jill’s standard breakfast. The period of time she would spend here with her father was a good segue from the autopsy to seeing the crime scene video.
“So tell your father about this new murder.” Gus got to the point. He lived vicariously through his daughter. He often had good advice for her, too. “Already they have the details on the news. So quick!”
“Yeah, it’s typical to broadcast a few facts, like the body being found after her parents filed a missing persons report over the weekend.” She took a bite of bread, the thin crust snapping to expose the fluffy white interior, without regrets. She was thin and a few extra carbs would be okay. “She was from Dearborn. Did they say that?”
“Yes, they did. Why would a beautiful girl from Dearborn end up in an alley downtown? Stay home with your family where you belong!” He tapped the table with his finger for emphasis. Jill laughed. She lived six blocks from her father. “Do you have any ideas yet who could have done such a thing?” She shook her head ‘no,’ her mouth full of bread.
“Not yet Papa, not yet. I haven’t even seen the crime scene video.” He was fascinated by her work, and their brief visit energized him. She pushed her plate away.
“Okay, I’m stuffed. And I need to get to work before I fall asleep. Can I take your cup?” She asked the same question every morning, standing up and holding out the white china mug to him. She took one to work daily, filled with coffee her father ground and brewed especially for her.
“Of course,” he said, going behind the deli counter to pack her lunch. He put fresh romaine lettuce, feta cheese, kalamata olives, a hard-boiled egg, fresh tomato, and two anchovies into a plastic container. He stuck the container into a brown paper bag and added a slice of the same bread she had for breakfast and a small container of his homemade, fragrant salad dressing, garlic-free for a work day. At the end of the week, she would return the five white china mugs, and the following Monday the scenario would repeat itself. He walked her to the cruiser and held her coffee cup while she got in with her lunch bag.
“Come by after work and get your dinner, Manari mou. Stuffed peppers tonight.” She reached up and with her hand through the window opening, patted his cheek.
“Okay, Papa, see you tonight!” Gus stood and watched Jill as she sped away, kicking up a little gravel for effect. Arriving at the precinct minutes later, heads turned and noses sniffing the air, teasing her, jealous that her father packed a lunch every day.
“Zannos, how many times do we have to tell you that it’s no fair? Bring some for everyone or leave your damn food at home!” the chorus of voices from the bull pen said.
“It’s just a salad! Gus is waiting for you to come for lunch.” I must smell like my dad’s cooking, she thought to herself. But they were only teasing her, aware due to her transparency that she’d be a self-conscious target. She wound her way through the crowded desks to her own little piece of real estate. Her desk was pushed up against that of Albert Wong, who was deep into a heated telephone conversation. Jill put her lunch in a small refrigerator behind their area. Next to it was a large green board that had a chart drawn in chalk, listing the active cases and the detectives assigned to them. At the end of the list, because it was the latest addition, was the name Gretchen Parker with Jill and Albert’s names written next to it. Jill looked and let it sink in. She would never grow tired of seeing her name listed under the word Detective. She went back to her desk just as Albert was hanging up.
“Sorry. My bank is having trouble keeping track of my money,” Albert said. He rummaged around on his desk. “Okay, here it is: video and scan. Any revelations at the autopsy?” She sat down facing him.
“Just facts,” Jill said as she dug through her purse. Reading from her notes, she related what the post revealed. “She was moved post-mortem; there’s no blood evidence on the sidewalk. Cause of death was exsanguination. Her back was blown out. She had a large laceration of the vagina, but no semen. Sam doesn’t think she was a working girl because she may have been a virgin until whatever it was was shoved up her vagina. Or it was her first night on the job. Someone was mad as hell at Gretchen Parker, but they took the time to comb her hair and bathe her.” She took the package from him and stood up. The video and scan were wrapped in a tevdek envelope. They felt cold in her hands, but alive. They would be her introduction to the hell that Gretchen Parker’s life ended in. She walked out to the hall and up two flights of stairs to a private room where she could watch alone. She put the video in first. An officer started shooting the video immediately upon entering the site, even before the crime scene tape was placed.
The film was slightly grainy because of the darkness. It had been early, just after midnight. The light on the camera was barely bright enough. The city didn’t have the money to employ a professional photographer with lights or to replace the infrared camera that was ‘misplaced,’ but Jill didn’t mind. She could see what she needed to see along with the scan. The scene was wide at first. She could just make out the body in the distance. Gretchen was lying on her back, nude. One arm was thrown over her body, the other at her side at an odd angle. She had obviously been thrown there on the ground. Her thighs were together, but legs sprawled from the knees down. Even in the dark, you could tell she was beautiful. Her hair stood around her head like a halo. As the focus came in closer, Jill saw more. Gretchen Parker had small, youthful breasts, not augmented. If she had been a professional she might have had large implants. Her crotch was shaved, but that didn’t mean anything anymore. It was getting harder and harder to make generalizations based on personal hygiene. As the camera got closer, Jill could see that Gretchen’s eyes were open. Her mouth was open in a silent scream, her chin mashed down on her chest. Unnatural. The camera swept the area, but it was difficult to see much detail. Then the film went to daylight. The body had been removed, but the area was undisturbed. Jill was grateful for the additional footage.
Even in the daylight, it was a gruesome looking alleyway. Cracked concrete was covered in a thick layer of broken glass. It had the look of the sort of abandonment that many parts of the city were slowly adopting. A large hotel and several restaurants backed up to the alley. There was a plot of grass with an Ailanthus tree growing through a crack near where the body laid, at the entrance to a blind alley with no exit. Whoever killed Gretchen had driven slowly by and thrown her out of the car. The camera swept a higher view; the windows of the buildings surrounding the alley came into the shot. She didn’t notice anything suspicious there. The video played a loop and the scene with the body played again. Jill could feel the way the air must have felt on Gretchen’s skin. She sensed the surprise the young woman experienced as she watched someone pull a gun out and fire at her. The impact of the bullet, the caliber large enough to have blown her heart apart and taken most of her back with it, must have thrown her back several feet.
Jill’s heart was beating faster. She could feel it racing, irregular. She would watch the scan, too because she had to, but she already knew what happened to Gretchen Parker. She was no working girl. Someone she knew well did this to her. And although she wouldn’t document her thoughts, Jill felt the remorse and sadness of the murderer. Of course, she would have to work the case step by step, but now they wouldn’t have to waste precious time on unnecessary investigative work. She turned the video off and, in the darkness of the screening room, closed her eyes and said, “Thank you, God.”
Author Bio:
In a former life, I was a registered nurse who worked in the Operating Room for many years. Prior to nursing school, I was an OR technician. I did my training at Marygrove College, and the clinical experiences we had took place in the Detroit Medical Center. I remember going to a mandatory autopsy in the morgue at Detroit General. All I can say is wow! I was so relieved; the only thing going on the day I was scheduled to observe was a brain dissection. After working in the OR for over thirty three years, I can’t stand the sight of blood.
I’ve been married to my high school sweetheart for forty-six years. We have two children and seven grandchildren and many four legged family members. We divide our time between the west Michigan lakeshore, the Brandywine River Valley, and the mountains of north San Diego county, traveling in an RV because of the dog. I usually have a computer on my lap.
Annie Hansen, a young (twenty-four) female schizophrenic private eye, must solve a grisly murder in the small island town of Serendipity, Canada. She is a suspect herself, and her boyfriend Samir and his cousin Pepsi may have been on the scene. A not-so-popular doctor, Dr. William Hubert, and the mayor of Serendipity, Rick Spacey, were both murdered, presumably by the same person, and both in a macabre manner. Mark, a handsome detective, teams up with Annie to help solve the murders. Was it drugs or money that prompted the crimes? Who is MASER, a cryptic message left on the doctor’s charts, and what message remains on Doc Hubert’s laptop memory stick and hard drive that would help Annie and Mark to solve the crimes?
A nurse with a brown belt in karate further complicates the crime scene. There is a morning with a meeting of Narcotics Anonymous, and a missing poker, perhaps the weapon of choice in the grisly killing of the doctor.
Can Annie find the murderer or will the villain strike again? If the villain escapes the small island to the mainland, it will leave Annie with an unresolved crime and a criminal record herself.
Annie works for Lorne O’Halloran, a private investigator hired by the government of British Columbia in Victoria to help the local cops and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to solve the crimes. A former criminal, Annie is hampered in her attempts by her own ‘voices’ and hallucinations, and the cleverness of the criminal.
A potential romance entanglement with the blue-eyed Mark entices Annie to make a positive difference in her appearance, and she grows both in attractiveness and mentality throughout the story. Her mother has left her a float house, where she eventually lives on her own, aided by Mark, her First Nations acquaintances Firewall Eddie and Crazy Leroy, and her own innate curiosity and resiliency.
From the group home where Annie and Samir share a room, to the last romantic scene on her float house, when the mystery has been untangled, Red Herrings lives up to its name, replete with red herrings and information about Samir’s medical condition, mental illness as experienced by Annie and her method of coping with delusions and hallucinations, and the cleverness of a network of friends who help solve a nationally-exposed crime in a small island town.
Targeted Age Group:: MG – Adult
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
I have attempted in Red Herrings to present a very human yet vulnerable young protagonist, Annie Hansen, who finds love after all, and a success perhaps not applauded by the world at large, an understanding of her illness, and a likely ending to her search for meaning and success in a field that is well suited to the vagaries of imagination that schizophrenia presents. We have many opportunities. I have met so many (Phil who travels on trains, and Don, hello!) who make the most of their handicap, but it is not a disability.
I wish you friendship, love and success, no matter how you measure it, in life and any romance that may, with the rest of humanity, make you happy or not. It’s up to you, my friends, enjoy what God has given you, and don’t let anyone tell you that you are less than the best of humanity. Though a cliché, ‘there but for the grace of God go I.’
How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
As schizophrenic myself, any others I might have met along the way helped to provide me with an appreciation of the illness and the potential we have for success. A special hello to Austin Mardon, my friend and fellow traveler, from whom I derived the special delight of hallucinations and voices which Annie experiences. Imagination plays a large part in an author’s characters, and as such, none of my characters is based on an actual person except, perhaps, myself!
Book Sample
My cell phone woke me early. It was the cops.
“Somebody bashed Doctor William Hubert over the head with a blunt instrument last night. They drilled his brains out of his skull with a surgical tool and piled them in a heap by his bloody skull. We need you, Annie. Hit the street.”
The call scared the pajamas off me, and I wanted to wake up Samir, shake him, make him see me, and help with the fear. Even the voices in my head didn’t know what to say at first.
My size ten feet hit the floor in a hulk stomp.
My roommate, Samir, was in the next bed, huddled under his grey blankets with no sense of what was happening. His long black body looked lumpy like a dun toad. Samir was my first real boyfriend. Ain’t that something? And me twenty-four years old and all, plus this mental problem.
I twirled the circle of cheap yellow metal on my left ring finger. Samir and I’d met in an ESL (English as a Second Language) class I volunteered to help teach a couple years ago on this island. We drifted together, two outcasts just able to afford this half-way house, and sharing for financial reasons. Only way Social Services would let us stay here together, in the same boarding room, was if they thought we were married. No questions asked.
The Powolskis were like a foster family to us.
Then the voices in my head started screaming. I covered my ears with my hands. Be careful. You didn’t listen to the phone call close enough. Stupid. It’s way over your head. It’ll take you more than hard work to solve this case, Iron Head. It’ll take brains and guts and you don’t have that.
“Son of a brownie,” I said in response. “Go away.”
You’re a homely girl, with kinky bleached-white hair and buck teeth. Good thing my personality more than made up for it. Yeah, at five foot nine I was a force to be reckoned with.
I yawned, trying to get air into my lungs. It’s your heart, stupid, you’re gonna die! No, it wasn’t my heart, I was only twenty-four years old and solid as Twenty Mule Team. My psych in Campbell River told me that anxiety made me short of breath and I’d yawn.
I thought of the phone call a few minutes before. They need you, Annie. The Doc’s dead as a salt cod. Grisly murder. Get on it. So I pulled on my jeans and shirt, and shook Samir.
Author Bio:
Kenna McKinnon is a Canadian freelance writer, author of SpaceHive (2012), and Bigfoot Boy: Lost on Earth (Mockingbird Lane Press 2013), as well as Benjamin and Rumblechum (Mockingbird Lane Press 2015), The Insanity Machine, Red Herrings: Solving Streetwise Crime Authors for a Cause 2015), Short Circuit and Other Geek Stories (Authors for a Cause 2014); and DISCOVERY: A Collection of Poetry( Authors for a Cause 2012). Her most memorable years were spent at the University of Alberta, where she graduated with a degree in Anthropology. Kenna is a member of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta and a professional member of the Canadian Authors Association.
When a busload of seniors from a suburban Nashville church head down the Natchez Trace on a carefree journey to The Big Easy, they are unaware that a Mafia hit squad is playing a deadly game of tag with them. All except one passenger. The man they know as Bryce Reynolds is really Pat Pagano, a World War II Medal of Honor winner and successful Las Vegas stockbroker who was lured into handling investments for a New York crime family. After his two grown sons are killed in an attack by a rival gang and his wife succumbs to cancer, Pagano decimates the mob with his testimony in federal court. He disappears, then resurfaces in Nashville as Reynolds, a retired businessman from Oklahoma. But after years of searching, an old Mafia capo tracks Pagano to the church bus en route to New Orleans.
Targeted Age Group:: Adults
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
Hellbound is based on a trip I took with a church group similar to the one in the story. I added the Mafia angle and the two main characters to provide tension and an exciting plot. But the details of the bus itinerary, places it stops and the activities in New Orleans mirror the actual trip. In addition to the Mafia angle, my trip differed in the hurricane at the end. Fortunately, we didn’t encounter that one. Some of the minor characters closely resemble people on the bus. It was fun to write.
How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
For Bryce Reynolds/Pat Pagano, I wanted a character who had demonstrated his courage and determination, someone with close ties to Las Vegas gambling (through his father), and a sharp enough investment counselor to attract attention from the New Yorkers. The female lead has a background similar to my own in where she lived and went to school.
Book Sample
Moving like a hurricane ready for landfall, slow, deliberate, destruction on his mind, Boots Minelli paused at the door. With that innate sense of the totally committed, he felt the payoff almost within his grasp. After years of chasing down false trails and blundering up blind alleys, he would soon see the terror in the traitor’s eyes. The bastard who had nearly wrecked the Vicario “family” no longer had his days numbered. It was now only a matter of hours.
The thin metal pick looked like a toothpick in his beefy hands, and though he hadn’t used the gadget in years, Boots wielded the thin metal pick with the ease of a locksmith. Pulling the heavy, wood-paneled door open, he squeezed through. Not that the doorway was any narrower than normal, but Boots had the size and demeanor of a snorting bull.
In his black outfit, he could have passed for an undertaker, which wasn’t that far off the mark. He lingered in the slate-floored foyer, stared into the living room, noted the faint lemony odor of a cleaning spray. It led him to suspect the room’s tidy, vacuumed appearance was the result of a housekeeper’s recent visit. The only thing out of place was a folded piece of paper on the floor.
The effort of stooping to pick it up left him panting, mouth agape, like some dumb-ass hound he might have chased off to fetch a stick. Ridiculous, he thought. Maddening. But that was the way a lousy fate had treated him lately. A big man in his middle fifties with abundant black hair, he had a bloated face, a joyless twist to his thick, pursed lips, and a body that made him a prime candidate for by-pass surgery.
Boots unfolded the paper and tilted it toward the light from the window. A heading identified the sheet as the itinerary for Lovely Lane United Methodist Church’s “LLSS New Orleans Tour.”
Beneath that was a list of dates and times for the week, starting with Monday:
“7:30 a.m. Board Bus, Depart Lovely Lane.
“1:00 p.m. Lunch at Barnes Crossing, Tupelo, MS.
“2:00 p.m. On to Natchez, MS, to spend the night.”
The gold Rolex on Boots’ massive wrist showed not quite seven a.m. A little earlier, parked in his rental car a short distance up the quiet suburban street from the red brick ranch, he had watched the man who called himself Bryce Reynolds pull out of the driveway in a four-year-old charcoal gray Buick. If Reynolds was leaving on the church bus at 7:30, Boots had a detailed schedule of where the man could be intercepted along the way to or from New Orleans.
But Boots had worked too hard and too long to risk any slip-ups. He needed a positive ID. Shoving the paper into his pocket, he launched a quick search of the house. Three-bedrooms, two-and-a-half-baths. One of the bedrooms had been furnished as an office. He pulled on a pair of sterile gloves and began to probe about the desk with surgical precision. He found a few utility bills, brochures promoting investment newsletters, an ad for a music CD club. Mostly he spotted Post-It notes stuck everywhere. It resembled a mini-billboard jungle–reminders of bills to pay, events coming up, checklists of things to do. One note confirmed Reynolds’ plans to be on the New Orleans bus tour. He’s in his seventies, Boots thought, tends to forget things if they aren’t written down.
Though certain Reynolds was not the man’s real name, Boots found nothing around the desk that would hint at a concealed identity. Next he turned to the family room. He found strictly masculine furniture, heavy wooden pieces informally placed. But he had an odd feeling that something was missing. Then it hit him.
No pictures.
Not a single photograph was displayed anywhere in the house, the mark of a man with a hidden past.
As he shifted his gaze about the wood-paneled room, Boots thought of the years of searching that had finally paid off. He finally had a current name and address for the man whose testimony at the big New York Mafia trial in the early nineties had decimated the Vicario stronghold.
Though there were no photographs, Boots noticed the walls had been decorated with paintings. They included a tranquil mountain village draped in snow, a melancholy lighthouse beside foaming breakers, a drab old grist mill amidst a fiery display of fall foliage. Boots had no taste for art, but he guessed these were real paintings, not knockoffs turned out in some assembly line operation. The traitor had money. He could afford the real thing.
Boots stared at the grist mill, but his thoughts strayed to the contact he had employed in Tennessee to dig into Reynolds’ background. There was little to be found. The man kept to himself, made no close friendships. He had bought the house in Madison, an unincorporated suburb on the northeastern side of Metropolitan Nashville, in 1995. His only slip had been a mention that he came from Tulsa.
A check in Tulsa turned up records of a Bryce Reynolds who had gone bankrupt in 1992. He started drinking heavily, and his wife left him. He disappeared from the radar screens shortly afterward. Presently he would have been in his early sixties. Boots’ source said the Madison Reynolds was likely over seventy.
The bright colors of the leaves around the grist mill slowly dragged Boots’ attention back to the painting. Then he had an idea. He walked over and pulled the frame away from the wall enough to peek in back. Nothing. He checked the lighthouse, in a smaller, vertical frame. This try rewarded him with the outline of a cutout panel.
The thump of excitement in his chest triggered a brief return of breathlessness. Boots took a moment to catch his breath then removed the painting from the wall. He pried the panel open with a pocket knife, revealing the combination lock of a wall safe. Probably an old one, he thought, put in when the house was built back in the sixties. A simple “box job.” Safecracking was a skill he had learned from a fellow student during his happily brief sojourn at a New York facility for the education of the criminally inclined, otherwise known as the state prison at Attica.
He flattened a large ear against the safe and gingerly twisted the dial. In the silence of the room, he listened to the soft click as the tumblers landed in position. He had the door open quickly. Inside lay a stack of “C notes,” crisp hundred-dollar-bills bound with rubber bands, probably a few thousand bucks’ worth. The safe also contained a handgun, but what caught his eye was a photograph and a long, thin case. He checked the picture first.
Bingo! A man and a woman, with two smiling younger men. He immediately recognized Patrick Pagano, his wife, Ellen, and their sons, Paul and Phillip. He knew what was in the case before he had it open. A star-shaped medallion with the word VALOR beneath an eagle’s outstretched wings, attached to a blue ribbon emblazoned with white stars. On the back was engraved “Sgt. Patrick O. Pagano, December 22, 1944, Bastogne, Belgium.”
The Congressional Medal of Honor. A flag-waving patriot despite his problems with the government, Tony Vicario had proudly bragged about having a Medal of Honor winner on his payroll.
Boots mustered the first genuine smile he had allowed himself in ages. He had withheld details of Pagano’s new identity from his boss until he could be certain he had the right man. Now he would tell Vicario he had accomplished the seemingly impossible.
Author Bio:
Chester Campbell got bitten by the writing bug when he started work as a newspaper reporter while a journalism student at the University of Tennessee. That was 68 years ago. He has worked as a newspaper reporter, freelance writer, magazine editor, political speechwriter, advertising copywriter, public relations professional and association executive. An Air Force intelligence officer in the Korean War, he retired from the Air Force Reserve as a lieutenant colonel. He is the author of five books in the Greg McKenzie mystery series and two books in the Sid Chance series. He also has a trilogy of Post Cold War political thrillers. His first Greg McKenzie novel, Secret of the Scroll, won a Bloody Dagger Award and was a finalist for Foreword Magazine’s Mystery of the Year in 2003. The first Sid Chance book, The Surest Poison, won the 2009 Silver Falchion Award at the Killer Nashville Mystery Conference. He served as secretary of the Southeast Chapter, Mystery Writers of America, and is past president of the Middle Tennessee Chapter of Sisters in Crime.
