The Slime Mold Murder
Page 3
“I can give you about eleven more minutes before I go grow moss on gravestones. Do you want the posters down?”
“Yes, please.”
Dylan scrambled up on the desk and began carefully peeling off a poster showing mosses and lichens of the Pacific Northwest. As the poster came off the wall, a discoloration appeared on the finished drywall.
Nazeem eyed the patch with a frown. “Ugh. I had forgotten this mess. There was a leak from the restroom upstairs, and it left that stain.”
“Do you want the other poster down?” Dylan stood on the desk, hands on the next large mosaic of photos, this one of local birds.
“Yes. Maybe that will nudge someone to get painters in.” Nazeem smiled. “This could be your office next. Are you going to grad school?”
“Nope. I’m way too broke.” Dylan pulled out his mushrooming knife and used it to loosen a wad of blue goo from the back of the poster corner. “I have ADHD, dysgraphia, little executive function, and will not be financially emancipated from my stoner parents until I’m twenty-four.”
“Twenty-four!”
“Right. I can vote, I can join the army and drive a tank, but I can’t do my own college financial aid packet until I’m twenty-four.”
“Can you get a lawyer?”
Dylan shook his head. “My parents are attorneys. They could do the paperwork for me, but I can’t ask them. They just aren’t in shape to think of much of anything. They’re in a bad space.”
“I heard,” Nazeem said, “that your sister died.”
“Yep.”
“I am so sorry.”
Dylan shrugged. “She’d been sick for years.”
“What are you going to do next?”
“Me?” Dylan lifted a shoulder. “Grow moss on gravestones.” He hesitated, then said, “This guy showed up at my house yesterday. My parents are in Mexico. The guy said the house is in pre-foreclosure.”
“Oh. That’s not good.” Nazeem’s eyes went wide with dismay.
“Any idea how fast they kick you out when the mortgage isn’t paid?” Dylan asked.
Nazeem shook her head. “I think you should look into whether or not the property taxes are paid.”
“God!” Dylan groaned. “I’ll bet not.”
“I can look this up for you when I get home. I can go on the county website.”
“I hate to trouble you.”
“Not a trouble. You saved me about three hours of work this morning. I am so grateful!” Nazeem exhaled. “I have been having a pity party about being a Muslim woman earning a graduate degree. Your troubles remind me that I am not alone with struggles. If I can do a few minutes on the computer and be of a small assistance to you, then this is a good and healthy thing.”
“Why have a kid when you could just adopt me?”
Nazeem swatted Dylan’s legs with a rolled-up poster as she laughed. “Watch it, buddy!”
“Don’t beat the hired help,” Dylan said. “We’ve got one more poster to go.” He moved a step to the left and began peeling up a corner of a montage labeled Slime Molds of California.
“Ah, getting back to science,” Nazeem said. “See the brown pretzel slime mold?”
“The one that looks . . . like a pretzel?”
“Yes. That’s Hemitrichia sepula. Globally, it’s quite a cosmopolitan species, but it hasn’t been documented in the Pacific Northwest.” Nazeem nodded toward the photo. “That would be a most excellent find. It grows on hardwood logs.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for it.” Dylan loosened the last corner and the poster slid down, revealing a second large and ominously piss-yellow stain on the wall.
“Oh, dear.” Nazeem looked at the stain with a frown. “Not nice at all.”
“Not your problem,” Dylan pointed out. “Just get gone.” He looked at the wall clock over the door. “Which applies to me. Gotta go.”
He rolled up the slime mold poster, handed it to Nazeem and hopped down off the desk as she stowed the poster into the last box.
Dylan said, “I can bump the dolly down the steps for you. My car’s in back too. I need to get going.”
“Thank you. That’d be fantastic. I’ll follow you down and bring the dolly back.”
“Just park it inside the back door and look tired,” Dylan said. “Somebody will haul it up.”
Nazeem snorted. “I am tired, but not manipulative. I can get it put away.” She looked around the cleared space. “It doesn’t look any bigger, does it?”
“Hey, table, desk, chair. What more does a biologist need?” Dylan wheeled the loaded dolly to the door.
They exited the tiny office together and made a companionable walk to the staircase. There Dylan halted, seeing Margaux coming up the stairs. A lean man followed her, a messenger bag slung across his body and a sour look on his face.
Dylan pulled the loaded dolly back and stepped to the side, making way for the new arrivals. Nazeem halted, warily looking at Margaux, who made an almost imperceptible nod to them as she gained the top step and turned to move briskly down the corridor.
Nazeem shot a questioning look at Dylan. Margaux could be frosty with requests for goods and services, but she tended to be pleasant and consistent with greetings.
The lean man stalked by, with no word of acknowledgement, his mouth set in a taut line of disapproval.
Margaux called down the hall, voice pitched a bit louder than usual. “Here is your office space, Dr. Ackler.”
Dylan jerked his head toward the stairs. He reversed the dolly and bumped it down the flight of stairs with rapidity. Nazeem came down the stairs quickly after.
Outside, Dylan transferred the last box into the passenger seat of Nazeem’s car. “Let me take this dolly back,” he offered.
“No, No!” Nazeem shivered. “Did you see Margaux’s face?” Nazeem shivered. “She was in Glacial Artic mode. I don’t know what Dr. Ackler said to her, but she was not happy.” Nazeem pointed at a car arriving in the parking lot. “There’s Angus. I’ll beg a favor from him to get the dolly back upstairs.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Dylan checked the time. “Gotta go. The gravestones are calling.”
A slime mold spore will produce a bud that will develop physical characteristics that fit its environment. In dry conditions the bud becomes a crawling single-celled organism. In wet situations the organism will grow two flagella and is called a myxaflagellate or “swarm cell.” The flagella are for locomotion and food gathering.
Chapter Five
The Civic started without complaint. A few minutes later Dylan took the turn onto Evergreen Parkway with some speed. The Witecki place was just a few miles north of campus, not far from Snyderman’s Creek.
Although Dylan had prowled the woods near the campus on many occasions, he’d never had reason to venture beyond the south end of the creek where it emptied into a small cove.
The creek wandered north from the college campus, through a deep gully, before emptying into Puget Sound in front of a steep hill whose base had been logged, leaving behind a tangle of stumps and viciously-thorned Himalayan blackberry vines. Even from a distance, the north shore of the cove was rough and unappealing.
The homes beyond the blasted hill were accessed by a road far to the north of campus. The reports of a nudist colony had tempted Dylan to explore the area, but he’d never had the time.
He now had to drive two miles north through Douglas fir woods to make a curving hook down to his new place of employment. A bald eagle, fully mature with a white head and tail, soared overhead through staggeringly blue skies.
“I hope it rains,” Dylan told the eagle. “We’d get some fall mushrooms popping up, and those can take hours and hours to document. We might get some slime molds for Nazeem too.”
If he was lucky, he’d find some early chanterelles today. If he could take a pound of fungal gold to Yousef this evening, he’d surely be invited to stay for the omelet-making that commenced almost every time Yousef received fresh edible mushrooms.
“Rain,” Dylan muttered. “We need some rain.” Just a little moisture would help with the moss project too.
He turned the car down a wide, paved road paralleling the Sound.
The water side had a few driveways, dropping off steeply, to small homes that had begun as summer cabins and were now year-round homes. “Expensive, year-round,” Dylan thought.
“Expensive” brought Mari to mind. He liked Mari. He understood that she was pent-up to socialize after a year and a half of side-stepping the Covid19 virus. But he was no candidate for romance, despite having had the vaccine’s two doses. He was far too broke and much too easily distracted.
And Mari wasn’t his sort.
He didn’t know what or who was his sort.
It didn’t matter. He didn’t have his life together. Not remotely. He’d been a bit of a jerk to Mari, but she’d gotten the message.
Dylan slowed to a stop as the paved road ended. A gravel drive rose to his left, leading to two homes with large terraces and long stretches of tall windows. The houses surely had vast territorial views, showing miles of Puget Sound as the waterway led north to Tacoma, Seattle and beyond.
On his right, the dappled sunlight lit up a post topped with the sign “Joy Road” over three rectangles of signage pointing down a hill toward the water. The top sign said “Bea’s Sculpture Garden.” The next said, “Natural Joy Fresh Air Reserve” and the last board held a stapled-on paper that read “Witecki Halloween Fun” with a hand-drawn pumpkin and an orange arrow.
Grinning, Dylan turned down the hill. He doubted the nudists would be visible from the road, but he could hope.
The road ended quickly in an expansive circle of gravel, which seemed to be a community parking area. A large flatbed truck loaded with blue Porta-Potties sat at the far end of the lot, with each Porta-Potty labeled “Northwest Party Essentials” in a light teal-green flowing script.
“Party essentials. Now, there’s a steady post-pandemic income,” Dylan murmured. “I’ll bet they’re booked up for months.” He let his car roll forward as he scanned the perimeter of the parking area.
An unkept footpath on the left led past a sign for the “Natural Joy Fresh Air Reserve.” On the right side of the parking area, Dylan saw two wide drives. One was marked “Bea’s Sculpture Garden.” The second drive, unsigned, disappeared into the woods.
Dylan took the unmarked drive. Tall Douglas fir and big-leaf maples paralleled the road for almost fifty yards before giving way to a large grassy lawn in front of a pale gray three-storied home with a French mansard roof and tall, narrow windows. Bright white woodwork scrolled across the front portico, with gleaming slender columns framing the entrance. Spikey black ironwork crowned the porch roof and upper story like layered, dark tiaras.
“Cool!” Dylan whispered. The house was both creepy and elegant. It was a perfect party house for Halloween.
He parked in the front and climbed out of the Civic, hearing a happy yodel from the trees near the drive.
Dylan smiled as he saw a zip line up in the trees. The line ended at a platform in a maple beside the house. A slender young man with dark hair and a teal-green shirt waved down at him from the platform. “Be there in a minute,” he called.
A pink and white blur came barreling down the zip line with a loud “Yippeee!” The blur slowed to become a brown-haired, plump girl in a safety harness with her lower limbs encased in snug pink-dotted leggings. She bumped to a stop over the tree platform, her feet dangling, then stretching for the decking.
The young man put a hand on the shoulder of the girl’s safety harness and tugged her in, steadying until she found her footing. A few moments later and the two descended a staircase built of clean, new wood. They came to Dylan, faces glowing.
“That looks like a blast,” he said.
The girl looked to be about twelve, with a smattering of freckles scattered on her round face. She grinned and nodded. “We can make money on that ride, for sure.”
She wiped her hands on her sweaty t-shirt before holding one out as she said, “I’m Alyson, and this is Garrett.”
“I’m Dylan.” He took Alyson’s hand and shook it. It was strange to touch people again after all the months of the Covid19 pandemic. He shook hands with Garrett too, whose mouth quirked in recognition of Dylan’s initial hesitancy.
“You didn’t get the bug?” Garrett asked.
“Nope. Got two rounds of vaccine. You with the party truck?” It wasn’t a clever guess. Garrett’s shirt matched the color of the writing on the chemical toilets and Garrett’s shirt had Northwest Party Essentials stitched over the pocket.
Garrett nodded. “Yep. Tables, tents, wine glasses, Porta-Potties, trash cans and now zip line testing available. My uncle’s the owner, and I’m his very own designated minion.”
Dylan raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like it comes with a paycheck.”
“All the hours I want to work. It’s been nuts.” Garrett looked up at the trees. “We’ve been doing tons of backyard events because people are still wanting to be in fresh air. This is nice to be in the trees.”
“The house looks perfect for Halloween parties,” Dylan said. “Is the idea that people ride the zip line in?”
Garrett looked at Alyson who shook her head. “We don’t have a corn maze,” Alyson told them. “We need some activities for daylight hours, so I suggested a zip line. My dad had some professionals come out yesterday to put in the wires and platforms. We’ll have to hire line managers, but I couldn’t wait. Garrett said he’d help me dismount, so Dad let me take a ride down.” Alyson’s face split into a wide smile. “It is a great ride.”
“Your dad’s up the hill, then?”
“Yeah. He’s in the upper platform,” Alyson said, with a hand wave to the east. “We saw you coming down the drive. He’ll walk down after he secures the gate to the platform.”
She tugged her shirt down, then adjusted the waistband of the leggings. She added a wiggle. “The safety harness is kinda weird.”
Garrett laughed. “Got a wedgie?”
Alyson blushed. “Yeah.”
“So that suggests you need to have a privacy zone for your zip line customers,” Garrett said. “Maybe a canvas modesty panel on the platform with a bench. There’s room up there. I could set it up for you next time I bring stuff out.”
Alyson put out a thumbs up. “Do it!”
“On it, boss.” Garrett smiled down at her.
Alyson turned to Dylan. “You the gravestone guy?”
“Yep. That and a biological survey.” Dylan looked down the drive as a yellow Volkswagen bumped towards them. “Here’s my colleague, Mari.”
Garrett flushed. “Mariposa Vega?”
“You know Mari?”
Garrett exhaled. “Yep.” He looked down at Alyson and said, “Hey, Short Stuff, I gotta go do a Porta-Potties consult next door at the sculpture garden.”
“Ok. Thanks for catching me.”
Garrett flashed a smile and strode off, moving quickly and taking a path to the right around the grass island in front of the house. It was a longer walk to connect to the driveway, but it took him away from the incoming car.
Mari parked her Beetle behind Dylan’s Civic. She sat in the car a moment, watching Garrett walk away.
Dylan looked at Alyson, who shrugged her shoulders.
Mari ran her hands over her head, fluffing her dark curls. Dylan and Alyson watched as she took a deep breath and pasted on a big smile before opening the car door.
“Hi, there,” she called. “I am so excited to see the gravestones. There’s nothing like a nice cemetery. Am I right?”
“She’s kinda weird,” Alyson whispered. “You know her?”
“I do. She’s not weird,” Dylan said. “Something’s up.”
Two haploid swarm cells can fuse
together to become a diploid zygote, that will feed, grow and divide into many diploid daughter cells, which sets the stage for the construction of the plasmodium.
Chapter Six
Dylan didn’t have time to ask Mari how she knew Garrett. A middle-aged man in jeans and a plaid shirt was making his way to them. As he came near, Alyson said, “There’s my dad!”
Alyson ran to her father, arms wide. She tackled her parent with shriek. “That was SO awesome. It’s a great ride!”
“Good!” Wade Witecki hugged his daughter, laughing. “Mom would approve?”
“Yes!” Alyson leaned her head into her father’s chest. “Big time, yes.” She wiped her nose on the back of her hand before adding, “Garrett has some suggestions, but he had to go do some things next door.”
Wade kept an arm around Alyson as Dylan and Mari stepped forward. Wade had the same light brown hair as his daughter, a color Dylan associated with pancakes and the local Suillus lakei mushrooms, a few of which were sprouting at the grassy edge of the woods.
“Welcome to Witecki’s World,” Wade said. “Or, maybe we’re going to be Halloween Haven. I haven’t figured our name out yet.” He shook hands with Dylan and Mari, keeping a hand on Alyson’s shoulder.
Alyson’s smile faded to a line. “Dad, you have to choose a name. We need to get signs ordered.”
“I know.” Wade looked down at his daughter with approval. “You keep me on it.”
To Dylan and Mari, he said, “We have a lot to do. I’ll be setting up a job application portal later today. If you know of anyone who would be good at running a zip line safely, please tell them to apply.”
Dylan thought of his empty refrigerator. “I might know of someone. What skills do you need and what does it pay?”
Wade rubbed his face. “I have some details to sort. Jesus, I need to finish figuring out health care and hazard coverage. I don’t want someone falling off a platform and not have them covered.”
“I have someone working on an estimate, and I better get it moved up.” Wade exhaled. “But my list shouldn’t detract from your work. Let’s focus on getting you two started on the gravestones and surveying. We’re burning daylight that you need.”