The NCIS midseason winter premiere finally arrived and we got to meet Agent Alden Parker’s favorite bakery lady, Eleni Kostakis. But was she everything she claimed to be? Find out what we learned about the bakery owner who made a mean Baklava.
It all started when Parker went to pick up some more cookies, but met her new employee Virgil Wilson, who seemed nervous as he helped Parker pick out his order. Unbeknownst to Parker, Virgil was being held hostage by someone who would go on to murder him.
Having figured out Virgil was in danger via a message inside the bakery box, the NCIS team began to investigate, despite it not being their jurisdiction. Through the investigation, they learned Wilson had turned his life around after getting in trouble for grand theft auto.
Kasie learned through testing sugar found on his body that half the bags of sugar contained cocaine. They brought Eleni in to determine if she was responsible, but before they could continue questioning her, a lawyer came in to stop the questioning.
NCIS teaches us more about Agent Parker
Despite not being able to question her, they did discover one of Eleni’s customers was a drug dealer named Charles Barbieri. She had just made a delivery to him and the cost of the drugs that were baked into the cookies was the same amount of money deposited into her bank account.
Before they could find Barbieri, they learned from Virgil’s parole officer that Barbieri got into a fatal fight against another drug dealer. They both were connected to Eleni in that they all had the same lawyer.
They were able to eventually talk to Eleni’s lawyer and learned multiple different drug gangs were trying to find a new way to move their drugs. One of those dealers, Arturo Jimenez, was one of his clients he couldn’t get ahold of.
At that point, Nick and Jessica had been following a lead when they came across Eleni being forced to make cookies at gunpoint for Arturo. Luckily, Nick was able to use some information he got from Kasie to save themselves while Jessica had done her best to get a message out to Parker without Arturo realizing when Parker called her for a status update.
The character is pursuing romance
Arturo was the one behind the drug operation, but he wasn’t Virgil’s killer. it was Virgil's own parole officer, who appeared unassuming throughout the episode. As it turned out, Virgil had met Eleni’s nephew, Manny, in prison, who in turn told Virgil to go to his aunt for a job. His parole officer was in on a different operation, known as a protection racket, and used his position to threaten the family members of his parolees. Eleni had gone to a lawyer for help when Manny was targeted, who in turn got her mixed up with helping Arturo.
So with two crimes solved and everyone else safe, the team was ready to call it a night. By the end of the case, Parker had discovered that once Manny was released from prison, he would be joining Eleni back to Greece to be with the rest of their family.
Even though Parker’s crush may not have gone anywhere, it was nice to learn where he was getting his favorite baked goods. We wonder if he will end up just perfecting his own Baklava recipe.
Make sure to watch NCIS Mondays on CBS at 9/8c.