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EQMM, May 2012
by Dell Magazine Authors
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Mystery/Crime
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Dell Magazines
www.dellmagazines.com
Copyright ©2012 by Dell Magazines
NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.
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Cover photo by Jim Ferreira
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CONTENTS
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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Novelette: THE GIRL WHO FISHED WITH A WORM
by Harry Groome
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Art by Mark Evan Walker
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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.
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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.
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PART 1
Long Odds
Almost ninety-five percent of violent crimes in Sweden are never solved.
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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 rig
ht 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.
She wiped her tears from her cheeks. “He was like a father to me.”
“I'm sorry,” Tonsoffun said. He stared into Salamander's watery blue eyes with his cold blue eyes. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
She shook her head one final time and asked if he was through talking with her. Tonsoffun said yes and then asked to fingerprint her simply as Violent Crimes Division Procedural Formality 23b.
* * * *
Saturday, July 5
Jerker Rhindtwist, publisher and lead investigative reporter for Umlaut Magazine, was unzipping his Ralph Lauren Slim-Fit chinos when his iPhone 3GS quacked like a duck. He checked to see who was calling, wondered what Inspektor Tonsoffun wanted but didn't wait for him to introduce himself, and told him he'd have to call him back, that he was in the middle of an editorial review.
“I'm afraid this is an emergency,” Tonsoffun said. “Your researcher, Froken Salamander, is in deep doo-doo and refuses to speak with a lawyer and I thought maybe she'd talk to you.”
“Fine and dandy, but what could be so urgent?”
“We're holding her for the murder of Olaf Gedda.”
“You've got to be kidding.” Rhindtwist glanced at his managing editor, Annika Uggla, and placed his hand over the phone and whispered, “This is one hell of a story.” He pushed himself up from the bed and lit a Chesterfield. “What more can you tell me?”
“Not much, other than we've got some very incriminating evidence.”
“For example?” Rhindtwist asked in his most penetrating investigative-reporter tone of voice.
“Her fingerprints are all over a bucket of worms,” Tonsoffun answered.
Rhindtwist laughed. “Your bucket of worms may be nothing more than a can of worms.”
“Clever,” the inspector said. “Only a wordsmith would come to that conclusion.”
“Whatever,” Rhindtwist said. “Gotilda's played with fire on occasion and even kicked the hornet's nest a time or two, but she wouldn't harm a soul unless provoked.”
“Wrong again. She beat the living daylights out of three young men yesterday who are pressing charges for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.”
“Deadly weapon?” Rhindtwist chuckled. “She doesn't carry any weapons.”
“She doesn't have to. She's a 4th dan black belt and technically her hands are lethal weapons.”
Rhindtwist said whoever she attacked must have done something to provoke it.
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Tonsoffun said, “but she's as nutty as a fruitcake from ahléns department store, so stop arguing and come up here and talk some sense into her. She's only making things worse for herself by not cooperating.”
The inspector's inexplicable sympathy for Salamander and the gravity of her situation weighed on Rhindtwist like a two-and-a-half-ton truck and a twinge of remorse ran through his lanky frame. At one time, he and Salamander had been lovers, but she had abruptly broken off their relationship and he knew it was he who had screwed things up. Further, he'd dealt with Tonsoffun before and knew he was a good cop—maybe not the sharpest tool in the shed, but a good cop, nonetheless. Finally he said, “Torsten, Gotilda did a short stint of freelance consulting for Umlaut awhile back but I wouldn't call her a friend, certainly not now. Furthermore, I don't want to get involved with her again. Isn't there someone else who could help her?”
Tonsoffun sighed. “I don't think so, Jerker. I think you're her last, best chance.”
“Okay,” Rhindtwist said. “I'll be there tomorrow but you owe me one.”
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Sunday, July 6
Rhindtwist arrived at the County Criminal Police Violent Crimes Division headquarters in Hudiksvall at 10:00 sharp and went directly to Tonsoffun's office, where he was introduced to Inspektor Nils Noonesson.
Once they settled in with their coffees, Noonesson began the briefing. “First, the bucket of worms that was sitting by Gedda's body has Froken Salamander's fingerprints all over it. Second, from the angle of the bullet and the lack of powder burns, the experts at forensics say the shooter had to be five foot eight or taller. Third, there is no evidence of a struggle, or that the murderer surprised Gedda, so the odds are it was someone Gedda knew and someone who knew no one else would be around at the time. All three point to the girl.”
“Although they could point to others,” Rhindtwist said.
“The bucket could be a red herring to direct you toward the girl,” Rhindtwist said.
“Improbable,” Noonesson said.
“Any other suspects?” Rhindtwist asked.
“None,” Noonesson said.
Tonsoffun shot Noonesson a dark look. “None right now, but we should talk with Manfred von Otter, Gedda's lawyer. He knows as much about Gedda's affairs as anyone and may give us some leads. But first, Jerker, can you tell us something about the girl? Her background, what makes her tick. I have a curious feeling—”
“Come on, boss, she's nothing more than a wacko, dumb blonde,” Noonesson interrupted.
Rhindtwist stared at Noonesson. “Let's get something straight right now. Gotilda worked for me when I was living like a hermit in Thermostadt and I'll agree that at times she's like a hand grenade with its pin pulled, but a wacko—no.” He paused to let what he'd said sink in. “When she worked at Handelsbanken, before she struck out on her own, they were impressed by her capacity to deal with numbers and computers, and her photographic memory. So, Inspektor Noonesson, don't fall into the trap of thinking she's stupid, because nothing could be further from the truth.”
Noonesson sighed. “So what's with the purple hair and all those rings and studs and not talking to a lawyer?”
“I'm a reporter not a psychologist,” Rhindtwist said, “but I'm sure if you've looked closely you're aware that she could have been a member of our national bikini team.”
Both inspectors nodded enthusiastically.
“My theory is that she worries that her beauty and her extreme sexuality diminish her intellect so she's chosen a way to disguise it.”
“I still think she's guilty,” Noonesson said.
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Tonsoffun said. “Do you know anything about her childhood?” he asked Rhindtwist.
“Nope,” Rhindtwist said. “She never talks about such things.”
EQMM, May 2012 Page 1