EQMM, May 2012

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Novelette: THE GIRL WHO FISHED WITH A WORM by Harry Groome

Novelette: A NICE NEIGHBOURHOOD by Kate Ellis

Novelette: TEMPORA! O MORES! OLYMPIAD! by Steven Saylor

Passport to Crime: CHECK NUMBER 275 by Adam Stodor

Reviews: BLOG BYTES by Bill Crider

Novelette: MARSH ISLAND by Lina Zeldovich

2011 Readers Award

Reviews: THE JURY BOX by Jon L. Breen

Novelette: THE HISTORY LESSON by Gordon McEachern

Novelette: BLACK PEARLS by Clark Howard

Novelette: NO FLOWERS by Martin Edwards

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Harry Groome is the author of a dozen published short stories, one of which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and listed as a finalist for the William Faulkner Short Story Award. Two of his stories have been adapted for theatrical performance, and he has also been published at novel length: see
Wing Walking
(2007). The title of this new story should be enough to tell most readers what it affectionately parodies. As for the fishing twist, the author is a fly fisherman who never admits to fishing with a worm.

PROLOGUE

Midsummer Eve, 2009

Olaf Gedda dead? A man with a heart of 24-karat gold murdered?

Gedda was a kind man who wouldn't harm a flea, a man everyone in Sweden knew was rich as a troll, worth close to fifty billion kronor. Often described as one of the big fish in Swedish industry, or as one of the twenty-point stags of the industrial old school, Gedda, as president of the Scandinavian Lunkersklubb, liked being called “the big fish” better. A charismatic man, five feet, six inches tall, who wore his thinning blond hair in a ponytail, at sixty Gedda was a confirmed bachelor who had no one to look after him except his butler of twenty-two years, Henrik Paulsson, and Gotilda Salamander, 26, who had worked for him for three years as his computer expert and, informally, his fishing companion.

What most did not know was that Gedda gave billions each year to hospitals, schools, and those less fortunate than he and had littered his will with numerous bequests.
No one
knew, however, that after a snootful of Skane Aquavit, he had confided to his lawyer, Manfred von Otter, that when he wasn't fantasizing about catching a trophy trout he fantasized about adopting Salamander, making her the daughter he never had, adding that he frequently dreamt about celebrating her birthday with her each Walpurgis Night.

Von Otter sprayed Gedda with a mouthful of Pere Magloire brandy. “Sorry, but you've got to be kidding,” he said, nervously brushing brandy from Gedda's jacket. “I thought you were bonking her, not wanting to adopt her."

"Whatever gave you that idea?” Gedda asked. “A little wishful thinking on your part, advokat?"

"No, no,” von Otter said, “but I saw her leaving your bedroom—"

"Yes.” Gedda smiled a satisfied smile. “Gotilda comes to my room every evening to say goodnight. Sometimes Henrik is there as well. They're like family to me."

Von Otter said he found the discussion educational and again apologized for spitting twenty-one-year-old brandy on his most important client.

One Midsummer Eve—Gedda wasn't sure if it was night or day, for at this time of year at latitude sixty-two degrees north it was light all the time—he was sipping a coffee and reading a book about fly-fishing for trout, savoring both his coffee and the book. Written in 1888 by an Englishman named James Tayler and titled
Red Palmer: A Practical Treatise On Fly Fishing,
it had Gedda nodding at each of Tayler's thoughts, for they seemed to leap from the page like a rainbow trout rising for a Rat-Faced McDougal:

Everything combines to render fly-fishing the most attractive of all branches of the angler's art. The attempt to capture trout, which are seen to rise to natural flies, is itself an excitement which no other method possesses . . . and, for our own part, we would rather hook, play, and capture a trout of a pound weight with fly, than one of a pound and a half with minnow or worm . . .

"He's right! Nincompoops with their jerkbaits and worms!” Gedda bellowed. “They all should be shot!"

But Olaf Gedda was the one who was shot. On July 4, 2009, he was discovered in his garden in Fiskbenstad, near Hudiksvall and the Ljusnan River, by his butler. He had been killed by a single 124-grain 9mm Makarov bullet that had bored through the corpus callosum and cerebellum of his brain and come to rest in his medulla oblongata.

Other than the bullet and a trowel clutched by Gedda's rigor mortis-stiff hand and a small bucket of worms that lay by his corpse, no other clues were found.

Olaf Gedda's murderer is still at large.

PART 1

Long Odds

Almost ninety-five percent of violent crimes in Sweden are never solved.

Friday, July 4

Criminal Inspektor Torsten Tonsoffun and his ambitious assistant, Inspektor Nils Noonesson, received the news of Olaf Gedda's murder at the County Criminal Police Violent Crimes Division headquarters in Hudiksvall, near Rosegartan, in the direction of Kyndyrgartan, at 11:47 a.m. Noonesson walked to the coffee machine and pressed the buttons for two cups while Tonsoffun sat at his desk thinking,
Olaf Gedda murdered? This is a big deal; a really big deal.

Noonesson placed a coffee in front of Tonsoffun. “I'm having the coroner send the bullet off to NFL by messenger. We should talk to Paulsson to learn how he found Gedda and then talk to the girl, the one that's—"

"Odd as an orangutan at a smorgasbord?” Tonsoffun asked.

"You took the words right out of my mouth,” Noonesson said.

"Okay,” Tonsoffun said. “You call the butler; I'll call the girl."

Gotilda Salamander's purple hair was spiked like the fanned crest of a displaying Guianan Cock-of-the-Rock. She had her share of body piercings too: right ear, one delicate gold ring; left ear, one gold ring and two diamond studs; left eyebrow, a gold stud; nose, a small silver ring; and in her naval, a gold replica of a fishhook, while her perfect left breast swelled beneath a colorful tattoo of a #6 Royal Coachman similar in style to the leaping rainbow trout that was the basis for the tramp stamp on the small of her back.

She was working sport gel into her hair and sipping a coffee and smoking a Marlboro Light and admiring the golden hair under her arms when her iPhone 3GS rang. The caller introduced himself as Inspektor Tonsoffun. He had some news for her that he thought would be best delivered in person and asked her to come to police headquarters in Hudiksvall ASAP.

Salamander said she'd be there when the mood struck her.

When she was finished spiking her hair and drinking her coffee, she cinched her black rivet belt above her black chinos, pulled her mid-length black leather jacket over her tight black T-shirt with i meet or exceed expectations stretched across her breasts in large white type, and stepped out of her apartment at number 19 Iveforgatan. Three members of The Gavleborgs Motorcycle Club stood in a circle around her BMW S1000RR. The one with the most pimples rested his elbows on her motorcycle's saddle. “Well, if it isn't the freakiest chick north of Stockholm,” he said.

Salamander seemed to enjoy his comment and smiled her perfect smile. “Get off my bike, you meatball."

"Meatball?” one of the other hoods laughed as he began to circle and taunt her. “What's that all about?"

"We're in Sweden, remember?” Salamander said, and dropped him with a knifehand blow to his temple. Before the second hood could react, she blinded him with a two-finger strike to his eyes followed by a Moorup Cha Ki to his groin. She watched him collapse on top of his friend and smiled at the man leaning on her bike. “And now, how about a Dwi Chagi to your Adam's apple?"

"A what?” he said, just before she spun and kicked him in the throat with the heel of one of her heavy Doc Marten boots.

Salamander zipped her black leather jacket and mounted her bike and roared east on Route 84, eventually turning west on the E4 just before the Gulf of Bothnia, due west of Kokakola, Finland. When she arrived at the police station, Inspektor Tonsoffun ushered her into his office and shut the door. “Coffee?"

She shook her head.

Tonsoffun invited her to sit, gesturing to one of the two IKEA Verksam swivel chairs in his office.

She shook her head again.

"Froken Salamander,” the inspector began. “I have some very sad and alarming news for you. Are you sure you won't sit?"

She shook her head once more and opened the silver cigarette case Herr Gedda had given her and lit a Marlboro Light.

Tonsoffun hesitated. “Olaf Gedda was found dead in his garden this morning."

"Dead?” Salamander said. “Papa Gedda?"

Tonsoffun stroked his square jaw with his large right hand. “Murdered."

Surprisingly, Salamander's large blue eyes began to fill with tears. Surprisingly, because she never cried. “Who would do such a thing?"

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Do you know why anyone might have reason to kill Herr Gedda?"

She sniffled and ran a finger beneath her nose. “Not possibly. He was the kindest, most generous man. He was . . ."

"Was what?” Tonsoffun said.