Dylan found himself liking Wade. Very much.
“Could you give us some background?” Mari asked. “How does our work fit into your broader picture?”
Wade pointed at the house. “This house belonged to my wife’s aunt, who died of old age the fall before Covid19 hit. My wife inherited the house and some investments, so we moved out here that winter and started working on the place.”
He paused. The muscles along his jawline rippled. Wade said, “My wife taught theater arts and a medieval literature class at the community college, and she helped at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival every summer.”
“Last year they canceled because of the pandemic, then the forest and towns around Ashland burned in those wildfires. So much turned to ash and smoke. God, 2020 was a horrible year.”
Alyson stepped away from her father and kicked a small rock so it skittered across the drive.
Wade shook his head. “I feel like kicking things too.” He took a breath and continued. “My wife caught Covid in January, right when it was bad everywhere.” He swallowed. “Her decline lasted almost two months. She made me promise we would have a good time after the pandemic. She said we had to have parties and costumes and fun things to do.”
He gave a wry laugh. “I’m an accountant. I don’t do party planning. I also didn’t ask my wife enough about her inheritance. She wanted to do some thinking about making donations. I thought I was doing a good job to give her some space.”
Wade tilted his head, blinking back tears. “She’d get better, then get worse. It was hard to focus. I was starting to ramp up with the tax season, and things were crazy.”
He swallowed, hard, and said, “Belinda declined quickly on Saint Patrick’s Day and died the following Saturday.”
“I’m so sorry,” Mari said.
Wade shrugged. “I learned there was enough money to start a foundation. Alyson and I have put a board together, and we’re going to use this place to train people in theater arts, costuming and customer service. We’re gonna pay good wages and have health coverage. And dental.”
“And vision,” Alyson added. “And mental.”
“Yep. Definitely we have to have the mental health coverage,” Wade agreed. “I could make a joke about working with creative artists, but, dammit, we all need some help these days.”
He stopped. “I can go on for days about all this. Back to what you need to know.” He waved a hand towards the drive. “General overview is that we share that big gravel parking lot with the Natural Joy people. They’re not a problem, but they are nudists, so you may get an eyeful as you work closer to the front of the property.”
Wade smiled. “One piece of the puzzle is how to have the nudist-sightings not be a problem for our Halloween guests. I’m open to bright ideas there.”
“Make a donation so they aren’t open that week?” Mari said.
“Hope for a cold front?” Dylan’s suggestion brought out another of Wade’s wide smiles.
“Good ideas.” Wade pivoted and waved towards the trees inland. “There’s a metal sculpture artist who lives next door. She’s fine with what we’re doing.”
“That’s my aunt Bea,” Mari said.
“Beatrix Vega!” Wade nodded. “I hadn’t made the connection. Great gal. She’s hosting an event this Friday.”
Mari said, “I may end up helping with that.” To Dylan, she said, “Aunt Bea is good about roping in family and friends.”
Alyson tugged at her father’s sleeve. “Tell her about the photographer guy. And the Commissioner.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Wade took a breath. “There’s an older guy you will run into. His name is Einar. He’s a photographer. He works all over, and I gave him permission to take photos on this property. He keeps to himself, but . . .”
Wade scratched the back of his neck. “He’s real quiet. Like a live ghost, almost. He can show up and scare the beejesus out of you. You can be working away and get a creepy feeling that someone is watching you, and it turns out it’ll be Einar. He’ll be taking pictures.”
“You sure he’s harmless?” Dylan made sure his eyes were on Wade and not Alyson, but he found himself concerned for this cheerful girl who clearly enjoyed outdoor adventures in her woods.
Wade’s eyes gleamed. “I had a background check run. He’s a well-known photographer.”
He smiled. “Einar’s photos have sold for big bucks to museums and collectors. He has ardent fans, which may explain some of his behaviors. He has unpaid parking tickets in San Francisco, but there’s nothing more. I think he’s a bit odd, but not dangerous.”
“And the Commissioner?” Mari asked.
“That’d be County Commissioner Cayden Kenyon. He lives on the hill on the right.” Wade stuck his hands into his jeans pockets and looked up, a smile tugging at his lips. “Cayden had an arborist in. Paid him big bucks to open up his view of the Sound.”
A laugh bubbled up as Wade said, “The better view gave him an eyeful of the Natural Joy guys and gals having fun on the beach. Cayden’s been screaming on-line and to the papers about depravity and his rights to a pristine landscape that he pays a buncha property tax to have.”
“Does the Commissioner come down here?” Mari asked.
“He called and complained to me, but hasn’t been down to our place,” Wade said. “I’m hoping he won’t find something to dislike about our operation. I talked with him a bit, and he said he was all for small businesses. I do think he’s prickly, so let’s be careful if he shows up. Let me talk with him.”
Wade looked at Alyson. “We’ve got tons to do.” Wade turned his gaze to Dylan and Mari. “Let’s talk about a contract with you. I’m looking for a natural way to make the gravestones look creepier. And I want to know what’s on the property. I don’t want to find I’ve asked Garrett to set up the Porta-Potties on a rare what-not plant.”
Mari looked down at her feet at the mention of Garrett’s name.
Wade continued. “I talked a bit with Dr. Berbera. I want a species list of birds, mammals, plants and fungi. I also would like a habitat map and your written observations on how we can run activities on the property in a sustainable and environmentally responsible way.”
“Sounds great.” Mari exhaled and added a smile. “We will be on the lookout for rare what-nots.”
Dylan thought it was a good time to strut their talents. He pointed across the gravel drive to a log at the edge of the woods. “I don’t know about a ‘rare what-not’, but I think you’ve got some slime mold working over there. See the white stripe?”
“Where?” Wade pivoted and squinted.
“Come on, I’ll show you.” Dylan led the group to the well-rotted log. He pulled on a rough edge piece and a long sliver came off in his hand.
“See? Looks like translucent little white fingers.” Dylan passed the wood to Wade and Alyson.
“Whoa! Would you look at that!” Wade peered at the lacy network of white. “There’s a lot there.”
Dylan said, “Honeycomb Coral Slime mold. Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa.”
“Serry who?” Alyson frowned.
“Ceratiomyxa,” Dylan said. “This particular species is what we call ‘cosmopolitan,’ which means it’s found all over the world. It’s not rare, but we’ll document it for you.”
“And you spotted it from across the yard,” Wade marveled.
Dylan shrugged. “I spotted a white stripe on the top of a rotting log, so I made a pretty good guess.”
He slid out his mushrooming knife and used the tip to point out a smearing section of white. “That portion is done, and we just see the leftovers. We’re lucky to catch this at this phase. We’re at the start of fall, and most of this species is done for the year.”
“The math of the reproduction attempt is impressive,” he said. “These fingers will release thousands of spores that will divide, then divide again. Each spore burps out a quartet of haploid protoplasts. Then these babies take up water and blob out and split again to make swarm cells.�
��
“Haploid is like a sperm or an egg?” Wade asked.
“Yes. Each piece will have a single set of chromosomes – but unlike animal eggs and sperm, these will have different shapes.” Dylan’s eyes lit up. “Sometimes the swarm cells will have a pair of long tails. Or a long tail and a short tail. Or no tails. They find other swarm cells and fuse to make a zygote. And that’s when the real fun begins.”
Mari added, “Slime molds have complicated life cycles.”
Alyson stared down at the log. “That’s cool.” She looked up at Dylan. “May I come with you guys? On the survey?”
Dylan felt his heart melt. He remembered what it was to be twelve and ready to explore the world.
“Sure,” he said as he returned his knife to its sheath. “If it’s okay with your dad.”
“Go already.” Wade checked his watch. “I should have talked over the placement of the Porta-Potties with Garrett. He took off before I got that done.”
Mari looked off into the distance and said nothing.
Chapter Seven
As Wade strode off to the house, Dylan asked “Alyson, will you lead us to the gravestones?”
“You bet! They’re on a trail near the front.” Alyson pointed down the drive and brought her hand to the right in a flat arc. “The trail goes over near the beach, then swings back to the cemetery. There’s a smaller trail back through the woods.”
“We can make a loop, then?” Mari asked.
“Yes.” Alyson rocked up on her toes, ready to run.
“Hang on,” Dylan thought for a moment. “Let’s think about documentation.” He looked at Mari. “We could just photograph as we go and then load to iNaturalist to generate a field list.”
“Works for me. Got your loupe?”
Alyson looked at her. “Aren’t we making a loop?”
“Another kind,” Dylan said. He pulled a folded magnifying glass on a lanyard from his daypack. “With this we can look for small species. We’ll show you when we get into the woods.”
As Alyson ran down the drive, Dylan said, “Spill, Mari. What’s with the party supplies guy?”
“Nothing.”
“Bull shit.”
“It doesn’t involve you. Not everything does.”
“He seems like a nice guy.” Dylan’s eyes moved constantly as he walked, taking in the standard species list of a Douglas-fir woods. He saw salal, sword ferns, evergreen huckleberry and the moss-covered trunks of slender big-leaf maples. Judging by the diameter of the tree trunks, these were second-growth trees, most fifty or so years old.
This lot had been logged, he surmised, probably in the 1940s, then replanted or filling in naturally since then.
Mari mumbled, “Garrett’s about a million times nicer than you.”
“Then why did he bolt like a deer when you showed up?”
“That is none of your business!”
“Mari. I have ADHD. Correction. I have severe ADHD. And a genius IQ.”
“Good for you.”
“Which means,” Dylan said, with a patient tone, “I can hyper-focus on a topic for hours and days, to the exclusion of all other things, like, oh, taking a shower. When something doesn’t make sense to me, I can stick with it with all my brain power until it does. Right now, Garrett’s behavior does not make sense to me.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Mari stopped in the middle of the drive and stared flames at Dylan. “I was an idiot. Okay? I was stupid, stupid, stupid, and I messed up.”
Alyson came jogging back, her face glowing with excitement. “There’s a raven! I heard him!”
“Great.” Dylan smiled at her. “Ravens are common around here, but we’ll make sure we get ravens on our species list. You can go imitate its call and see if it answers and flies closer to you.”
Alyson turned and ran back down the drive.
“Where were we?” Dylan said. “Ah. You were telling your pal Dylan about a monumental fuck up.”
Mari burst out laughing. “You are impossible.”
“I prefer ‘incorrigible.’ It’s a classier label.”
“It’s my Aunt Bea’s fault,” Mari said. “And the stupid Covid19.” She sighed. “And my general incompetence.”
“What happened?”
“You gotta understand that my Aunt Bea is a confident woman. She just goes for what she wants. No apologies, no sugar. Just goes for it. She was telling me that when she wants a man, she makes the first move because it puts her in control.”
“Oh, man. I’m gettin’ it.” Dylan gave a moan of sympathy. “She’s like a combat veteran who tells a kid how to fight a war, only the kid can’t even find the off switch to the flamethrower.”
“That’s a pretty good analogy, especially since Aunt Bea is a welder.” Mari stopped to examine a small, white mushroom emerging along the road edge. “White fiber-head.”
Dylan took photographs with his smart phone, first from the top, then kneeling to capture a side-view before knocking the mushroom over to take photos of the stipe and gills.
Mari waited until he was finished. She picked up the mushroom, cupped her hands around it to make an aromatic chamber and took a deep sniff. “Smells like green corn. Inocybe sororia.”
“Nope. They changed the name,” Dylan said. “It’s, ah, Pseudosperma sororium.”
“That is so infuriating. How do I empty the old name out of my head?” Mari tossed the mushroom into the woods.
“You don’t. Just take a breath and add a coda.” Dylan spoke as he rapidly thumb-typed information into the iNaturalist app. “Say, ‘Inocybe sororia, which is now Pseudosperma sororium.”
“Putting me on the path to a professorship, where I will be legendary for my ability to put students to sleep.” Mari moaned an “Ugh,” then added, “Which will fit right in with my social incompetence.”
“Getting back to the important topic here. You put the moves on Garrett?”
“The short answer is an affirmative.” Mari sighed. “Did you know that the Center for Disease Control reports that 78% of people are sexually active by age twenty? Which means there is only a small percentage of us who are clueless monks.”
“You’re hiding in data points,” Dylan said. “And you’re not twenty. You’re nineteen, like me, right?”
“I’m also someone who has never dated. Thanks to my general nerd-dom and a two-year long pandemic, the arc of my trajectory from Beginner to Experienced is not ascending. Having a sexual encounter while avoiding diseases is increasingly difficult, resulting in my anxieties manifesting as aggression.”
Mari groaned. “Which I understand academically and hate practically.”
“Returning to the important point of this discussion, what’d you do?”
“I grabbed his shirt front and pasted a kiss on his chin.” Mari rolled her eyes. “I was trying for his lips, but missed.”
“When was this?”
“About a week ago. He came to my Aunt Bea’s place to talk about her fall show schedule. I waited until they were finished talking and . . . I went for it near his truck.”
“That’s sexual harassment in a workplace,” Dylan said.
“No!” Mari stopped in the road, her face flushed. “It was stupidity and Fear of Missing Out.”
“You have to apologize,” Dylan insisted. “Like fast. You want to fix this.”
“Oh, God.”
Dylan found himself ready to be relentless. “A week ago? That was after you cornered me with the whole eyelash-batting thing? I was ahead of the Porta-Potty guy?”
“Dude, you are the bottom of the barrel. Permanently and forevermore. I was out of my mind, for sure.” Mari shook her head. “I’m done. Enough with the mortification. I am never dating anyone ever. I’ll die a virgin. Or a nun. That’s it. I’ll be a nun-virgin-ecologist. I’ll put it on my website and Instagram as my tagline.”
Mari started walking down the drive, moving fast.
Dylan jogged to catch up with her. “You’re just human in a nutty
time.”
Mari kept going. They could hear Alyson calling to the raven and an occasional mystified croak back from the bird.
“She’s not doing too bad.” Mari stopped to hear the next exchange of calls.
“She seems like a nice kid.”
“Who is wearing designer duds to run around the woods with us,” Mari said. “Whoever is shopping for her is spending some money.”
“Really? She’s wearing a T-shirt and pants.”
“That’s a Maisie Wilen outfit. Probably a buck fifty for the shirt.”
“That’s not so much,” Dylan said.
“A hundred fifty dollars,” Mari clarified. “And the leggings are twice that.”
“Are you sure?”
“Wilen has an iconic look.” Mari’s smile twisted to a wry smirk. “I asked my mother for that butterfly T-shirt for my birthday. With a name like Mariposa, butterflies are my thing, and that’s a cool shirt. Mom told me I could experience high fashion when I earned a high paycheck. Meanwhile, I will be getting a gift card for a tank of gas.”
Dylan laughed. “Maybe I can trade Alyson for one of my shirts and pawn hers.”
They caught up to Alyson near the front of the long drive. She was rocking up and down on her toes. “Did you hear? The raven answered me!”
“Good job. We’ll get you up to speed on chirping at Douglas squirrels next,” Dylan said.
“We should be kinda quiet from here,” Alyson said. “Killer may be out there on the sand.”
“A killer?” Mari asked. “A murderer?”
“No.” Alyson shook her head. “He’s a little white dog. He stands guard while his owner is . . . busy.”
“Let’s get to the cemetery.” Dylan looked over Alyson’s head to the woods.
“This way.” Alyson walked off the drive, following a narrow deer trail. The sun shone down through a stand of big-leaf maples, mottling the path with flickering bright spots. The trail swung to the left, where they could see a hillock of sand through a break in the underbrush. A small white dog sat on top of the sand heap, looking out toward the Sound.
The Slime Mold Murder Page 4