The Slime Mold Murder Read online

  The Slime Mold Murder copyright 2021 by Ellen King Rice

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance between characters to persons living or dead is unintended and coincidental.

  The biological details, including the description of the slime molds are as accurate as I can make them.

  Learn more at www.ellenkingrice.com

  Cover by Damonza.com

  Art by Duncan Sheffels.

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-7338276-4-5

  ePub ISBN: 978-1-7338276-5-2

  Mobi ISBN: 978-1-7338276-6-9

  Also by Ellen King Rice

  With illustrations by Duncan Sheffels

  The EvoAngel (2016)

  Undergrowth (2018)

  Lichenwald (2019)

  By Ellen King Rice

  Larry’s Post-Rapture Pet-Sitting Service (2020)

  Praise for The EvoAngel

  ‘Compelling characters and plot with a little fungi thrown in! A FINALIST and highly recommended.’ The Wishing Shelf Book Awards

  “Melding together of science and a great thriller . . .”

  “This is a great read and with such an unusual plot twist.”

  “A wonderful read!”

  “A delightful page-turning thriller . . .”

  “A totally engrossing read . . .”

  Praise for Undergrowth

  “Nothing says Pacific Northwest better than mushrooms, lush forests and gray, rainy days. . . Rice’s multi-generational story combines a murder, mushroom research and disturbing backwoods encounters.”

  “A must-read for Olympia lovers.”

  “As compelling and hard to set aside as a box of chocolates.”

  Dedicated to those who struggle with focus and task initiation.

  Your brilliance remains and your goodness inspires.

  Contents

  Also by Ellen King Rice

  With illustrations by Duncan Sheffels

  Praise for The EvoAngel

  Praise for Undergrowth

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Want to know more about slime molds?

  How to help an author

  From The EvoAngel

  Chapter One

  Wabi-Sabi – an imperfect, rustic beauty

  Illustrations by Duncan Sheffels

  A story of death and ambition,

  set in the woods of the Pacific Northwest

  On Slime Molds

  I write to inform and empower. If this story provides the reader with one or more insights to our Northwest woods, then I am deeply pleased.

  Slime molds are cool. It sounds immensely pleasant to be living a quiet life in the woods with the option to gather in community for banquets, sexual orgies, childcare and moving days.

  The morass of slime mold classification schemes becomes vaguely understandable when one considers that the hundreds of species called “slime molds” have many origins, with all of these beginnings finding a path to a live-alone-except-for-some-activities end point.

  One group of slime molds are the Myxogastria. These organisms all begin as a single spore. As a juvenile, an individual is often warty or spikey, and this phase can last for decades, details that I find endearing.

  The phases that follow are complex and variable. There can be long dry periods of stasis followed by times of rapid growth and abundant vibrancy.

  Why aren’t these bizarre and intriguing life forms better known? Alas, much of their lives are spent as a single cell. It is only when the cells gather to move, eat, and reproduce that they are easily noticed.

  I’m all for there being many paths to living a robust life, and for each life stage to be recognized. Here then, is a story of death and ambition to compare the actions of humanity to a few of the other life forms on this amazing earth.

  Ellen

  Slime molds are a peculiar assortment of species. These species are lumped in the Protista Kingdom, which is a junk drawer for taxonomists. The Protista have a membrane-edge to the cellular nuclei, but are not plants, animals or fungi.

  Members of this kingdom look related, but DNA analysis says “not so fast.” The Protista include all sorts of oddballs that defy classification.

  Life is messy.

  Chapter One

  5:30 p.m. Wednesday, September 8

  Olympia, Washington

  “Pre-foreclosure?” Dylan mulled the word. “I’m not familiar with the term.” He made his voice level and neutral. The unevenness in the gravel beneath his feet did not help his effort to project calm. The ruts in the driveway were only one of many home maintenance issues he easily ignored on a daily basis, but today the uneven ground gave his legs a physical input of data that rudely aligned with the flavor of the new word he was hearing.

  He might not be intimate with this terminology of finance, but he was bright enough to know saying anything in the ‘foreclosure’ word universe was worth a moment’s attention. A genius IQ came in handy that way.

  “Pre-foreclosure means the mortgage payments have not been paid for several months.” This came from a man with long, thin strands of hair swept over the high dome of a balding head. The man stood next to a sparkling-clean silver Lexus he’d parked behind Dylan’s vintage and non-sparkling Honda Civic.

  Dylan respected field marks. White rectrices on a bird, seed heads on grass stems, gill-stipe attachments under mushroom caps, and bract styles on conifer cones all conveyed information.

  The words South Sound Housing Acquisitions embroidered in a cursive arc on a navy blue, premium cotton polo shirt suggested this balding man knew something of real estate. The Lexus signaled he had some competence in money matters. At the very least, Mr. Comb-Over managed a car lease.

  Mr. Comb-Over said, “When payments aren’t being made, the lender files a default note. This will show up on the county property records website, and my company takes notice. Sometimes the property owner is taking steps to catch up on the mortgage, and all is well. Other times the property is going to be put up for sale, and that’s where I come in.”

  “You’re a home buyer?” Dylan had a great poker face. He deployed it now, acting as if his face was a completely separate ecosystem from his skittering stomach.

  “Yes, we are,” the visitor said. “We buy distressed properties, then come in with a design team and construction crew. We invest money and manpower into a property so that i
t can go on the market successfully.”

  Mr. Comb-Over looked past the dented Civic to Dylan’s family home. He said, “Wow. Some deferred maintenance here, for sure.”

  Dylan looked at the house, suddenly seeing it with a stranger’s eyes. The faded red roof tiles showed intermittently through long spans of furry green moss. Small branches poked up from the loaded gutters like toothpicks popping up from a party tray. The bright blue paint on the front door had bubbled up during the summer to reveal dark wood underneath. Stripes of gray-green lichens inhabited the stair risers. The lawn needed mowing.

  Hell, he had just mowed the lawn. Wait. That had been in June. Fair enough. Grass did grow given it was the Northwest’s sunny season. He’d been busy.

  “You a tenant?” Mr. Comb-Over asked.

  “Ah. Yeah.” Technically the answer was ‘No.’ Dylan didn’t pay a dime of rent to his decamped parents. It was how he was able to scramble through another summer’s worth of tuition payments while working part-time as a lab assistant.

  “Can you put me in touch with the homeowner?”

  “Ah.” Dylan paused. His parents were in Mexico. More correctly, his parents were in Mexico and as high as turkey vultures coasting on rising spring thermals. His parents called it “pain-remediation,” but “sky-high” was his Face Time experiences with them.

  He doubted they’d do well on an unexpected call from a house-flipper. Better to stall and engineer that conversation.

  “Want to leave a number?” he said.

  “Sure. Any chance of me taking a look inside?” Mr. Comb-Over radiated pleasantness. “I’ve got a pizza discount coupon I can leave with you.”

  Dylan’s stomach rumbled, but he shook his head. “Nah. I’ve been kinda casual. Let me see if the owner wants you in, and I’ll make sure I pick up things before you come through.” He grinned. “And the pizza places don’t deliver this far out. Believe me, I would know.”

  Mr. Comb-Over smiled, handed over a business card and left with an easy wave.

  Dylan exhaled. He stood in the driveway, taking in the slanting light of the approaching autumn evening, recalling his father talking about “getting away for a bit.” That was two years ago.

  His father had said there “was some life insurance,” when Jaylene died, but his father’s eyes had skittered up and to the right, a poker-tell of a bluffer. Who would insure a chronically-ill, dying girl? His sister had died as she had lived, in pain, surrounded by her parents’ love and without meaningful support from the medical community for her rare and hugely unlucrative illness.

  And now it was becoming clear his parents hadn’t been paying the mortgage. Dylan turned and savagely kicked a tire on the Civic. Then he hopped back and swore. There was a good chance the car insurance hadn’t been paid either. He’d have to check. He was nineteen. Insuring a car by himself wouldn’t be cheap. It might not even be possible.

  “Think positive. Gather resources.” He mouthed the words of Yousef Berbera, the college professor who was more his father than the Mexico-living source of his Y chromosome.

  He had the car. He had a roof over his head until . . . well, he could figure that out. He had one more semester of classes before finishing his undergraduate degree.

  Dylan smiled. A college graduate at age nineteen. He should send his grade-school principal an invite to the graduation ceremony. It’d be worth sitting through a morning of speeches just to hear her private words of approval. She’d wrangled a commitment from him to finish high school and apply to college at a time when incarceration or the French Foreign Legion looked more likely.

  Dylan blew out a second large breath. Step One, survive until December. Step Two? Yousef wanted him to apply to graduate school. He’d be a super-broke student, even by grad school standards.

  Or he could try and get a job with a biology degree. He had a focus in bryology and mycology. That had not been a brilliant choice for a broke kid.

  He was too young to farm marijuana, and he lacked the steady discipline required to grow gourmet mushrooms in sterile medium. Cleaning was not his thing. Neither was having resources. The Civic leaked when it rained. It also smelled of mold and unwashed sweat socks. It was no car for an Uber gig.

  He could wait tables. Yousef said he had the “lean, James Dean look going.” According to Yousef, it meant handsome enough to earn good tip money from the ladies who lunched at the waterfront cafes in downtown Olympia.

  Which could work if he could keep his mouth shut. Telling a plump matron the calorie count in the bread basket and salad dressing would be so like him.

  Crappy choices.

  Back to Step One. Focus. Yousef’s lab assistant gig was done. No more money. He needed a different path for the fall.

  Focus.

  His ADHD mind giggled as he inhaled for another vagus-nerve-calming exhalation.

  Tuition was due when classes began at the end of the month.

  He looked over to the front of the house. A yard sale would be stupid. Nobody paid top dollar at a yard sale, particularly when the yard looked like this one.

  A different species of moss was infiltrating the lawn on the north side of the yard. Interesting. He had three field guides to mosses in the back seat of the Civic. He could key out this emerging species and add a record to his iNaturalist page.

  Dylan groaned. “Not the time right now. Hell, it probably means the septic tank is full or leaking. Focus.”

  Collectibles. People paid money for collectibles. Was there anything in the house that could be sold as a collectible? Antique furniture was out of fashion. Fine. He didn’t have any.

  Indigenous art was in. People paid for indigenous art. What if he painted some rocks with a Northwest design and called the results something tribal?

  His friend, Grace, a Squaxin tribe member might laugh, especially if he made money. Her extended family would not laugh at all.

  What could he take to a pawn shop? His family didn’t own any firearms, the lawn equipment was old, and there was no jewelry. The family camping equipment wasn’t fancy.

  He had his mushrooming knife. It was a nice one.

  But it was a gift from Yousef. Dylan knew he’d never part with it.

  His stomach rumbled again. He recalled his mother packing some freeze-dried backpacking dinners in a plastic bin labeled “earthquake supplies.” He’d helped her heave the bin onto a high shelf in the garage. He’d been, what, twelve? Would it still be any good?

  He was about to find out. And after he ate, he’d get an idea of what to do next.

  Dylan smirked. Ideas he had. Always. They came in waves. Not serene, beach-going waves. His ideas came in floods of clarity, led by foamy bits of details and followed by a growing tonnage of connections. Other people surfed the ocean. He surfed his brain.

  He just needed to make sure his fast mind didn’t wipeout on the flat waters of reality.

  He closed his eyes. He was broke. A lot of people were these days.

  Dylan exhaled, and opened his eyes. “Make like a mushroom and thrive in the shit.”

  He shouldered his day pack and trudged up the driveway to the house.

  Chapter Two

  “There was a call today asking for someone to do biological survey work. Did I know of a qualified candidate?” Professor Yousef Berbera helped himself to a wide wedge of mushroom and sausage pizza. It was the first slice from a steaming pie.

  He quickly transferred the hot piece to his plate, then nudged the sizzling pizza pan toward Dylan. “Go ahead. You get the rest. Finish it.”

  “Finish it?” A young woman with a head of short dark curls leaned forward in the pizza parlor booth after accepting a Caesar salad. “Dylan’s going to eat all that?”

  “One of my joys in life,” Dr. Berbera said, “is watching Dylan eat. His metabolism is a remarkable illustration of the diversity that can exist in a species. I limit myself to one piece and remain portly. Dylan, however, can consume all this and retain his inherent wiriness. I theorize his c
ells have extra mitochondria.”

  “I’m living a beer-free existence,” Dylan spoke around a mouthful of pizza.

  “There is that.” Yousef refilled his glass from a pitcher of beer. “I still prefer to think you are special. You have the physique of a slime mold’s sporangia.”

  The young woman tilted her head, listening, then she broke out in a wide smile. “Are you saying Dylan is a beanpole with a big head?”

  Yousef sipped his beer. “There’s also the possibility of some sort of voracious tapeworm.”

  “That would be interesting!” The young woman smirked. “Could we examine his stool for egg cases?”

  “And determine which species it might be?” Yousef took a moment, as if he were seriously considering the project. “I believe there are six that are known to infect Homo sapiens.”

  “Yousef, don’t encourage her,” Dylan protested. “Mari’s a pain in the butt already. I don’t need her anywhere near my shit.”

  Mari made a face and returned to her salad.

  Dylan swallowed a bite of pizza, his system rejoicing as the cheese and sausage passed by taste buds and descended. This was definitely better than rummaging through the garage for the freeze-dried food in the emergency kit.

  Yousef Berbera had rescued him many times in the past eight years, and tonight was no different than most. He’d been thinking he was fine, but when Yousef texted, offering a dinner, he’d instantly responded with a sunshine emoji and an inner rejoicing and relief that would be unspoken but understood.

  Pizza beat the hell out of decades-old backpacking kibble.

  Dylan and Yousef were on a first name basis except in times of university administrative events, which were hallmarked by a return to formality for as long as deans or donors were present.

  At the moment, all that was going on was Dylan’s usual state of intense student poverty.

  “There’s a job for us?” Dylan spoke again around a mouthful of pizza. “Something stinky or something sweaty?”

  Yousef smiled. “How much do you two know about growing mosses? That’s part of the gig.”