The Slime Mold Murder

by Ellen King Rice

  A bat swooped down over the grassy space at the back of Bea’s yard, adding to the lengthening shadows as a sign of approaching night.

  “What’s left?” Dylan asked. His arms itched fiercely, and he felt drowsy.

  “A few minutes of raking the front clean and smooth,” Bea replied. She hesitated, then said, “I have some bins of fairy lights. What I’d really like is for them to be strung up in the trees around the front. It’ll be a ladder job. I know it’s a lot to ask, and it may be better done tomorrow, if at all.”

  “Which trees?” Dylan looked up at the towering firs at the rim of the back yard.

  “The five ornamental maples in front. Not the firs. We’re looking at twenty-five feet up, not eighty.”

  “I’m good for another hour or so,” Mari said. “We could test the lights and get started.” She looked at Dylan with a glint of challenge in her eyes. “Or are you too tired?”

  Dylan snorted. “My arms are itching, and it’s making me crazy. Might as well go full-tilt. Got any antihistamine?”

  Bea did.

  He had to hand it to Wade and Bea. The old people in their mid-forties kept up with an antihistamine-powered Dylan in the after-dinner work session. Wade and Bea wheeled out totes of lights, moved ladders and made suggestions for adjustments. Alyson tested strands, then handed up twine ties as Dylan and Mari swarmed up the trees, wrapping and chattering.

  It was full dark before the last tree was wired.

  “Come on, Alyson. We need ice cream,” Bea declared as Wade plugged in the last strand of lights.

  They sat in plastic lawn chairs on the cement pad in front of the work shed and admired the twinkling lights as Alyson and Bea brought out bowls of vanilla ice cream topped with fresh blueberries.

  “How you holding up, kiddo?” Wade asked as Alyson sank into a chair, cradling a bowl of ice cream against her chest.

  “I’m tired, but this was really fun.” She looked up at the lights. “Mom would have loved this.”

  “Yes, she would.” Wade put his ice cream bowl on his knee. “We could wire up some lights at our place, I guess.”

  “No,” Alyson shook her head. “Our trees are too tall. We’re better off as the Halloween place.” She spooned in some ice cream and asked, “The Canterbury Tales was a poem, right?”

  “I think it rhymed.” Wade looked over at Dylan and Mari for confirmation. “It’s a long story made of smaller stories told by people in a big group going on a pilgrimage. I know Geoffrey Chaucer wrote it.”

  “It’s poetry too,” Dylan said, “And social commentary, especially on the role of the church. I read it when I was twelve. It’s middle English, so it’s a slog.”

  “You read The Canterbury Tales at age twelve?” Bea whistled. “I’m impressed.”

  “He’s got a genius IQ.” Mari spooned her ice cream. “Let me guess. You read it in its original middle English. And you didn’t use Wikipedia or Cliff Notes.”

  Dylan shrugged. “I like authentic.”

  “I want to read it for my poem.” Alyson’s voice was confident. “For language arts class this fall. Mom would have liked that.”

  Wade’s eyebrows went up. “You sure you don’t want to do The Walrus and the Carpenter or The Cremation of Sam McGee?”

  “The Raven,” Mari offered.

  “You could go with hip-hop,” Bea said. “Regulate.”

  “The Canterbury Tales,” Alyson insisted.

  “We should go home and get to bed,” Wade said. “You’re going to need your rest if you’re digging into Chaucer.”

  Bea looked thoughtful. “I had a class in medieval literature. You’re reminding me of a character in The Canterbury Tales. I can use him in my speechmaking for tomorrow night. We’ll make more money if I can make a clever ask.”

  “Cool.” Alyson stood up, telling Bea, “I’ll be back tomorrow to do the name tags.”

  “Thank you, darling. Good night.”

  After Wade and Alyson left, Bea collected ice cream bowls, saying, “Mari, you and Dylan are fabulous bricks. I, like Alyson, need to find my bed. But you can stay out here as long as you like. It’s a fabulous evening.” Bea stretched and yawned. “Please do unplug the tree lights before you go.”

  With that she took a tray loaded with bowls up the steps to her house and disappeared.

  “I’m headed home,” Mari yawned. “What about tomorrow? Will Wade let us survey?”

  “He doesn’t want us off in the woods.” Dylan thought for a moment. “Why don’t I text him and suggest that we work close to the house? We could definitely go over the log with the Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa more carefully. I’ll send you a text with whatever schedule he says.”

  “That works.” Mari left as Dylan sent a message.

  He decided to wait a bit to see if Wade replied. Bea was right. It was a splendid evening. He walked along the rim of the graveled area, unplugging tree lights and then returned to the plastic lawn chair when his smart phone pinged.

  “Near the house OK,” Wade’s message read. “10 a.m. start will work.”

  Dylan typed back agreement, then sent a message to Mari. He stretched his legs out and bounced them a bit. He wasn’t sleepy. With the antihistamine in his system, he’d be lucky to get to sleep before two or three in the morning.

  He didn’t want to go home to the depressing realities of his parents’ rundown house.

  He thought of Killer, and hoped the little dog was with loving people.

  And he wondered where there might be a patch of poison oak.

  When two swarm cells fuse, the resulting slime mold zygote can move and feed. The nucleus will divide by mitosis, which means the daughter nuclei will be identical to the parent, each with a diploid set of chromosomes.

  The slime mold zygote produces many daughter cells. These daughter cells remain together and are called acellular. This simply means there is a single membrane surrounding two or more nuclei.

  After many divisions, the outer membrane may encompass billions of diploid nuclei, all living in community.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Civic started easily. Dylan kept the headlights off and carefully drove out Bea’s long entrance to the community parking area. He pulled up next to the dilapidated Natural Joy Reserve sign and turned off the car.

  A million stars were out. Late summer constellations shone through wide mists of distant systems.

  The terraces of the two houses up on the hill were lit, but not brightly.

  Dylan climbed out of the Civic and hoisted himself onto the hood of the car, leaning back onto the windshield to take in the night sky. He admired the wide W of the Cassiopeia constellation. Bats flitted over the gravel parking lot, making the most of the rich, early fall insect-catching.

  It was a beautiful evening. Dylan knew that the forecast was for another ‘severe clear’ day to follow, which would be good for Bea’s garden party.

  It was challenging weather for biological surveying in the Pacific Northwest. Late summer always was.

  The ferns were dry. The mosses cryptic.

  As soon as a hard autumn rain fell, the woods would surge with life. Fungi would emerge. There would be chanterelles and a few fibercaps in the interlude before more rain and cooler nights brought in the full flush of mushrooming diversity that was a hallmark of the northwest woods.

  Fleshy Agaricus, poisonous Amanitas, petite Mycenas, dung-loving Paneoluses, and glowing Hypholomas should all be in Wade’s woods. If rains arrived soon, he should be able to record an impressive list of fungi by Halloween.

  The slime molds would be harder to document. He and Mari would have to be diligent and lucky to document even a dozen species of the myxogastria.

  Dylan folded his hands over his stomach and enjoyed the stars. He allowed a wry acknowledgement to creep in. They would not find a pretzel slime mold. He’d let the passion of hunting-the-unusual overtake his common sense. Look where that had led.

  It led to an upset Nazeem, which led to . . . her g
etting her choice of a baby name? He smiled.

  Dylan didn’t try to impose logic or rationality on his wandering thoughts. An antihistamine always made his mental processes resemble a scurry of scrambling squirrels.

  The terrace lights up on the hill blinked out. Dylan looked up at the two long houses. There was movement on the left-hand terrace. That would be the Judge’s home. It took a moment for Dylan’s eyes to adjust, but then he could see two bodies coming together, back lit by a light from inside the house.

  One shape was womanly with a narrow waist. Her blonde hair shone in the star light. Victoria.

  The second body was bulky and wide in the shoulders. The Commissioner?

  A voice next to Dylan said, “Passion is mesmerizing, is it not?”

  Dylan jumped and swallowed a shriek as he recognized Einar’s tall outline. “Jesus, Einar. You about gave me a heart attack.”

  Einar’s white teeth flashed in the night as he smiled. “What are you doing out here this late?”

  “Just enjoying the evening.” Dylan settled against the Civic’s windshield. “And you?”

  “The same,” Einar said. “You’re not afraid of getting strangled?”

  “Should I be?”

  “I don’t know.” Einar stepped closer to the car, then turned to lean against the side of the car, staring up the hill at the shadows on the terrace. “I don’t know why Mitchell was killed.”

  “Could it be that article he said he was going to write?” Dylan asked. “He said he was a reporter.”

  “Hah!” Einar barked a dismissal. “He wrote for The Stranger. The Commissioner would take it as an honor to be dissed by a screaming leftie paper.”

  Einar crossed his arms and stretched, arching his back a bit before saying, “I got an email from that detective. I went to my storage unit and dug through old files. I found Mark’s name and contact information and sent it to Moubrey.”

  “Did she say anything about him getting Killer?”

  “She didn’t, but I reached out to Mark, and he says he can’t have the dog at his place. He’s allergic.”

  “So, what happens to Killer?” Dylan, still sitting on the car hood, brought his knees up, and carefully put his hands on his knee caps. Even in the dark, he wasn’t going to show signs of agitation.

  “Mark said Mitchell has a sister in Bellingham, but she’s a cat person.”

  “Can you give me Mark’s email or phone number?” Dylan kept his voice casual. “Alyson and Wade might want a dog.”

  “In a minute.” Einar stood, leaning against the side of the car, looking up the hill. The two entwined shadows on the terrace broke apart, then one followed the other inside.

  Dylan said, “The Judge and the Commissioner are a couple?”

  “Well, I’d say they are ‘coupling.’ Anything more than that remains to be seen.”

  “You know the Judge?” Dylan asked.

  “Victoria?” Einar’s teeth flashed again, this time in a wide smile. “Definitely. I do know Victoria.”

  He pushed off the car and pulled out a smart phone. The small screen lit up as he scrolled through his contacts.

  “Give me your number,” Einar said, “And I’ll shoot you Mark’s info.”

  “Thanks.” Dylan said. He recited his number, then asked, “Ever run into poison oak around here? I’m itching. I think Killer may have been exploring.”

  “Huh. I haven’t seen it on Wade’s place. There’s some over near Snyderman’s Cove,” Einar said. “That’s not far, as the crow flies.”

  Dylan’s knees jiggled. “The Commissioner’s house and the Judge’s house? They’re on the same hill as the one across from the cove. Right?”

  “Yeah, but it’d be a hell of a scramble to get down to the cove from the backside of that hill. There’s a dip and a broad, flat shelf, but then there’s a drop off. There’s no road.”

  “I’ve only seen it from the cove side,” Dylan said. “I didn’t realize there was a shelf. Could someone be camping back there?”

  Einar shrugged. “Dunno. No drinking water. I think it’d be a hard place to hang out. And Cayden would be looking down on you. Can’t see him letting someone be back there.”

  “There were two guys in a blue truck here this afternoon,” Dylan said. “One of them was a Richie.”

  “Richie and Randall. You want to leave those guys alone.” Einar sounded certain.

  “What’s going on with them?” Dylan squeezed his kneecaps to keep his legs from jiggling. The antihistamine was roaring through his system, demanding motion.

  “I don’t know exactly, but they’re bad news.” Einar turned away, his body now just a lean silhouette against the dark night. “They tried to hit me up for a twenty-dollar donation for them to leave me alone. I told them to fuck off and they did.”

  The photographer yawned, and stretched. “Time for me to turn in.”

  Einar moved away in an easy long stride. Dylan heard him start to whistle. He didn’t know the name of the tune, but it sounded like an Irish jig. Einar and his whistling disappeared down Bea’s driveway.

  Dylan tried to relax and enjoy the stars.

  He wondered where a small, white dog might be.

  That was a line of thinking that would only lead to anxiety. Dylan climbed down off the car hood. A moment later, he was in the car, driving up the hill without making a conscious decision.

  The smart thing to do was to go home. He was a smart guy.

  He kept driving.

  To get to the south side of Snyderman’s Cove would mean driving north out of Wade’s neighborhood, then east around a sharp bend, then south followed by a turn back to the west and finally there would be a turn down a winding dirt road. He had a vague memory there was a gate on the road, which would be shut, most likely, this time of night.

  If, somehow, he got to the south edge of Snyderman’s Cove, he wouldn’t be able to hunt for poison oak. It was too dark.

  But he might be able to see if there was a campfire on the hillside.

  He drove with the window down, enjoying the night air. He wasn’t in a hurry, and he didn’t want to be surprised by a deer feeding on the road’s edge.

  It took him almost twenty minutes to get to the dirt road that led down to Snyderman’s Cove. A hundred yards in, the headlights picked up the gate. Dylan stopped, wary of nosing the car up to a gate that might not open.

  He turned off the car and walked down to the gate, illuminated by the car’s headlights. He found a loop of chain around a stout post and a large padlock fastened the ends with no yielding.

  Dylan returned to the Civic, turned off the headlights and sat in the dark, his itching forearms resting on the top of the steering wheel. It’d been silly to think he could get below the Commissioner’s home tonight.

  And what would he see, anyway? He closed his eyes and recalled the last time he’d slogged north of campus to visit the ravine that held the headwaters of the creek. When he had looked at the creek mouth and across the cove, he’d seen a narrow strip of muddy beach.

  The hill behind the narrow beach rose quickly to a tangle of down logs and old stumps. The slope must have been logged in the ‘60s or so, or perhaps illegally more recently. The cutters had taken most of the trees by the water, leaving behind a few massive stumps and a lot of clutter that now hosted ferocious beds of Himalayan blackberries. It was a tangled mess.

  He hadn’t been tempted to explore. His memory was telling him the lower slope was a blasted environment, but the upper half of the slope was different. Tall Douglas fir and leaning madrones filled in the space to the top of the hill. The flat bench of land Einar mentioned must be shaded and hidden by those upper trees.

  Would Cayden Kenyon strangle Mitchell and put a dog into a bag to die? Dylan could picture the Commissioner throttling someone. That part was easy to visualize. But he had a hard time seeing the hot-headed Commissioner sacking up Killer. Kicking the dog, sure. Catching the dog? Not so easy.

  Richie and Randall were
greasy, scary guys. Drug dealers? They weren’t very successful drug dealers, given the way they looked.

  It was time to go home. Dylan checked his phone. It was after midnight.

  He turned the key to start the old Civic.

  Which responded with a click, followed by utter silence.

  Aphanos comes from the Greek root aphanes and means “invisible.” An Aphanoplasmodia is a plasmodium that is very delicate and lacks pigment. Slime molds in the Stemonitidales and Trichiales orders typically have aphanoplasmodia, so these species may be present but difficult to document until fruiting bodies emerge.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Dylan swore. He jiggled the key, prayed to the gods of travelers, sinners and idiots and tried again.

  The engine roared to life, then stalled.

  Wade’s lovely white envelope lay on the passenger seat. Now, instead of being a joyous promise of a month of eats, the envelope seemed to mock him. A new ignition switch cost six hundred dollars. He was three hundred sixty dollars short of that.

  And he was miles from help.

  Plus, there was a good chance he didn’t have paid-up insurance to cover a tow. He’d been busy. He didn’t want to call for a tow truck now and then be hit with a towing fee.

  He checked his phone. One a.m. Yousef would not be thrilled to get a call. Mari might be cool, but he hated the idea of asking.

  Nazeem and Harris were out of the question.

  Margaux?

  Nope.

  Dylan mentally ran through his list of friends, nixing them all for one reason or another. Several were away from Olympia for the semester break. There was no one he felt ready to bother with a rescue request.

  In desperation, he climbed out of the Civic and looked around. The gate was in front of the car, but it was downhill a dozen feet away.

  Perhaps he could roll the car down the hill and have the conditions be different enough that a stall would not follow the next ignition attempt.

  Dylan ducked back inside the car, took off the parking brake and used a foot outside the open door to push off. Fortunately, it was a small car.