The Blue Salmon by M. King
Cover art: Emmy Ellis
Length: short fiction /<5000 words
Published by: Wild Child Publishing (2009)
Part of Wild Child Publishing’s Luneyville, USA, series: short fiction tied together by irony, twists of fate, coincidence, and the bizarre people and happenings which all converge in Luneyville!
Albin X. Vicuna may just be the world’s worst private eye. But, when a mysterious woman tracks him down to Lunaville, Albin has a chance to bust open one of the town’s deepest secrets. The only question is, what does The Blue Salmon really want? And who let that cat in here?
“I laughed out loud on many occasions and wished this well-written tale had gone on forever.”
~ 5 Champagne Flutes from Cocktail Reviews (site now closed)
Excerpt:
© M. King 2009
A kind of sultry feel hung in the air of Lunaville when the man in the camel coat and oversized sunglasses slipped past the Tap Shoes restaurant. He moved like a shadow…or as much like one as a man dressed in those clothes could do on a sunny, warm autumn day. He stopped by the diner’s plate-glass window, with its stenciled tap shoe design, and brought a white linen handkerchief out of one of his many pockets. He mopped his streaming forehead.
Hmm. Strange.
Through the glass, he made out the familiar figure of Otis the truck driver, glued to his usual booth, an expression of horrified amusement on his face. A moment later, the Tap Shoes’ door burst open, and the scrawny figure of Miss Shawston—owner of Lunaville’s only grocery store—emerged at a rate of knots.
She pelted across the street and into her poky little store, obviously in a state of some distress. The man in the camel coat sniffed and frowned.
A state of some personal discomfort too, by the smell of it.
“Only Tulips Grow Where Irrigation Is Faulty,” he observed to no one in particular and carried on his way.
He’d bought himself a little office just off Lunaville’s main thoroughfare. It didn’t look much from the outside—of course, if it had, it would hardly have been covert, would it?—but the sign painter had done a great job on the new door:
Albin X. Vicuna
Private Investigator
Free Quotations Upon Request
He’d had second thoughts about that last part, but a man had to drum up custom however he could these days.
Especially after that nasty business back in Knox Ridge.
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