The Slime Mold Murder Read online

  Dylan and Mari exchanged a surprised look. “Someone wants to pay money to grow moss?” Dylan asked. “Seriously? In the Pacific Northwest?”

  Yousef’s smile broadened. “Indeed.”

  “Usually, people are looking to kill moss,” Mari said. “My dad uses iron sulfate.”

  Dylan nodded. “My neighbors paid me to spread some of that on their lawn. A complete waste of time. It just made brown spots in the lawn, and then the moss grew back.”

  He added, “If the location is better for growing moss than growing grass, then you’re gonna get moss until you poison it so much you get nothin’ but dirt.”

  He thought of the roof of his home. “What kills moss on roofs?”

  “Zinc,” Yousef said. “At least that’s what I used last time I did some roof work.”

  “Growing moss.” Mari started typing on her smart phone. “Looks like you can whir some moss with buttermilk and spread it on a brick wall. Then you keep it moist.”

  “Why would anyone pay for what can be found in a ten-second internet search?” Dylan pulled a second slice of pizza onto his plate.

  “It’s for gravestones.” Yousef smiled as he leaned back in the booth, knowing he had their attention. “The call was from Mr. Wade Witecki. He’s opening a Halloween maze and haunted house at the end of the month, and he thinks his gravestones aren’t creepy enough.”

  Mari’s eyes lit with interest. “I heard about this. It’s the big house next to my Tia Bea’s place. It’s perfect for Halloween stuff.”

  Yousef nodded. “The location is one of the reasons I thought of you. I thought you might enjoy working near your aunt’s place.”

  He paused for a sip of beer before adding, “There’s also a nudist beach nearby. So much to explore in this world, isn’t there?”

  Dylan snorted. “No payday in that sort of naked.” He took another bite of pizza and spoke at the same time. “This guy is using real gravestones?”

  “I have no idea,” Yousef admitted. “I certainly hope he didn’t import used ones.”

  “And if they’re fake, why not hire a theater arts kid who knows flocked paints and glue guns?” Dylan asked. “I’m not sure you can even get much moss to grow in a few weeks.”

  “You’re such a downer, Dylan.” Mari frowned. “You’d see only turds in a pony parade.”

  Dylan grunted. “Just keepin’ it real. Details matter.”

  Yousef set down his beer glass. “Indeed, they do. And there is more to the mission. Wade wants a botanical survey. I asked if he’d like a list of fungi, and I had to explain what fungi are, but then he was all for a mycological survey as well. He also wanted a list of birds and insects sighted.”

  “He inherited the property earlier this year, and he’s keen to manage it properly. There’s eight acres, most of it second-growth Douglas fir and big-leaf maple with a few large cedars and hemlocks at the back of the property.”

  “Why doesn’t he just walk around the property with a smart phone and an iNaturalist app?” Dylan shot a look at Mari. “I’m not trying to be a downer. I’m just trying to understand.”

  “Witecki doesn’t have time,” Yousef replied. “Think about it. This is the first Halloween since the pandemic ended. Halloween is the biggest holiday besides Christmas. People will be keen to party and to bring their kiddies for an adventure. I think the place will be packed from the day it opens, which is scheduled for Friday, October first.”

  Mari blinked. “Which gives us three weeks to do a comprehensive survey and grow moss.”

  “How much does it pay?” Dylan asked.

  “I didn’t get into that,” Yousef said. “I told Mr. Witecki that I had two sharp students I could recommend.”

  He paused, then said, “I told him you two would work well as a team.”

  Dylan looked at Mari, raising his eyebrows.

  She stuck her tongue out.

  “Hey, the salamander in your shirt collar was weeks ago!”

  “You are a colossal jerk, Dylan.”

  “I’m not romance material,” he retorted.

  “No kidding.” Mari frowned and stabbed a crouton on her salad plate.

  “Now, children,” Yousef said, “Are you interested in this project?”

  Dylan eyed Mari, then put up his hands, fingers curled down like puppy dog paws. He panted, then whined, “I need the money. Like seriously.”

  Mari sighed. “Got it. It’s okay, Dylan. I’m in. ‘Go Team,’ and all that. Even if it’s just gas money, it all helps.”

  Yousef smiled. “I think Wade Witecki will treat you right. I’ll suggest you tell him a professional salary is twenty dollars an hour.”

  Dylan whistled. “If it rains, we could have some fungal species that come up and dissipate in a day. To catch those species and to do as much surveying as we can? It could add up to a lot of hours. Twenty dollars an hour for each of us?”

  Yousef winked. “That is typical way for paychecks to be issued.”

  “We could start at dawn and go to dusk,” Dylan said, calculating rapidly. “A twelve-hour day for twenty days, is . . .” his mind came up with “Four thousand, eight hundred dollars. A piece.”

  Yousef’s eyebrows went up. “That is a lot. Wow.”

  Mari shook her head. “I couldn’t do twelve-hour days for twenty days. But we still could rack up a lot of hours if we identify crepuscular and nocturnal species.”

  “You’ll have to sort out the scope of the surveying with Mr. Witecki,” Yousef said. “Keep in mind that this sort of project is also a résumé builder. We’ve had good luck finding some first records for Washington State or for Thurston County when we really start looking – particularly for the fungi.”

  He smiled. “Think of yourselves as a modern-day version of David Douglas.”

  Mari blinked. “The botanist who had the Douglas fir named after him?”

  “Yes.” Yousef beamed. “He was an intrepid researcher who documented hundreds of plant species in the Pacific Northwest.”

  “I think you’ve told me that a million times,” Dylan turned to Mari and said, “David Douglas fell into a pit and died young.”

  Mari shivered. “I know. He fell in, and a bull fell in with him. He was crushed to death.”

  Dylan reached for another slice of pizza. “Some say it was planned. Some say it was murder.”

  “No pit traps or bulls around now,” Yousef said. “You’ll be safe as houses.” He pulled out a smart phone. “Besides, if Douglas was murdered, it was for his money, which you don’t have. Why don’t I give Wade Witecki a call and tell him you’ll be along in the morning to talk about the job?”

  Myxogastria spores are rarely smooth.

  The surface is often warty or covered with spikes.

  Chapter Three

  Dylan’s alarm went off at a quarter to seven in the morning. He groaned and considered going back to sleep, knowing he had the ability to block out the chirping of the alarm’s electronic crickets. He wasn’t due to meet Wade Witecki until 10:00. He’d promised to help Nazeem, a graduate student, move out her office.

  There was a decent chance that Nazeem would share her breakfast.

  Breakfast, especially from Nazeem’s house, was worth leaving the bed. Dylan yawned, scratched, and made himself stand up before he turned off the incessant crickets.

  Twenty minutes later he was showered and dressed in clean jeans and a plain blue chambray shirt. He’d spent ten minutes in a shower that delivered lukewarm water and five minutes pawing through the laundry, rejecting shirts that were rank in smell or message.

  Once he knew Witecki’s nature, he could, perhaps, risk an “Unzip your genes” or a “Let’s see cleavage on a cellular level” T-shirt.

  The jeans were an easy choice as they were his only choice. As always, he finished the jeans with his brown belt and the sheath holding his mushrooming knife.

  He’d hesitated before choosing the collared chambray shirt. It was his reserve clean shirt. Wearing it today mea
nt he really had to do laundry soon. He was out of laundry detergent, and his on-line reading about DIY soaps didn’t yield any cheap alternatives.

  Rinsing his empty shampoo bottle and pouring the dregs into the washing machine might work. There was also the soap slime in the bottom of the bar soap dish that might yield some suds.

  With those thoughts percolating, he carried his day pack with a water bottle and no lunch out to the Honda Civic. The little red car always made him smile. It was a nimble handling stick-shift car, fun to drive, but definitely showing its age.

  His mechanic, Lenny, had told him, “It’s a vintage car now. We gotta keep an eye on that ignition switch. It’d be smart to replace it. You don’t want it to fail when you’re on the highway. That’d cut off the fuel system, and then you’d stall.”

  Lacking the six hundred dollars to replace the switch, Dylan had been relying on acknowledging the capricious Gods of Old Cars before starting each day’s drive to campus. There had been several days when starting the car had been a process of sad clicks eventually ending in ignition.

  Today, he rolled his eyes skyward, taking in a V of geese moving south. He murmured, “Sure would be good to get to work today,” before he opened the driver’s door and slid into the worn bucket seat.

  His cell phone pinged. The text message was from Nazeem. It read I have boxes to move. Also falafel and kabsa to share. Are you coming by?

  Dylan smiled. He typed, On my way.

  The Gods of Old Cars approved of his plans. The Civic roared to life with the first turn of the key.

  The drive to Summit College felt like a gift on this fresh September morning. Towering hemlocks, cedars and firs reached up to a cloudless blue sky. Spots of chrome-yellow sparkled from the early turning leaves of big-leaf maples, and there were flashes of burgundy red from spindly wild cherry trees.

  Dylan took the turn into the college campus at a brisk speed, enjoying the unpopulated road. He knew change was coming. At the end of the month, this road would be crowded with incoming freshmen, their parents, and great volumes of belongings.

  Now, in the three-week cusp between the end of summer term and the start of the fall term, the campus had only a handful of faculty members and a small army of maintenance people at work.

  Vaccinations had changed everything. The landscaping crews, who had been morose all spring, were now out, smiling and joking as they raked leaves and waved at Dylan.

  Parking was easy. Dylan grinned as he took a narrow alley behind the Biology Department to a parking lot normally reserved for senior staff. He enjoyed parking his old car in the space usually occupied by a Tesla belonging to a tenured microbiologist, who, Dylan knew for certain, was backpacking in Alaska during the academic break.

  Dylan jogged up the back steps of the building and used his lab worker’s key card to unlock a heavy metal door. Once inside, he ran up three flights of steps, emerging on the top floor of the building only slightly winded.

  Nazeem’s tiny office sat sandwiched between the stairwell and a storage closet. Dylan could smell garlic as he came close to the office. The door was open, but he rapped on the door frame anyway.

  A slender woman turned from her computer to smile at him. A deep blue silk hijab enhanced the oval shape of Nazeem’s face, the blue color of the hijab replicated in the embroidery edging her long tunic. The loose top blossomed over a belly rounded with pregnancy.

  “Getting close, right?” Dylan said.

  Nazeem’s smiled broadened as she rested a hand on her swollen front. “Next Wednesday is our due date.” She pushed back from the computer and turned the chair to a long table loaded with papers, boxes and a small cooler.

  She picked up the cooler and turned back to Dylan. “I hope you’re hungry. My mother has been cooking like she needs to feed an army.”

  “I’m starved. Thanks. It’s good of you.”

  “A win-win. You get a home-cooked meal, and I am not the size of a brontosaurus.” She made a shooing motion towards the table. “Sit. Eat. You can move things better on a full stomach.”

  “What needs to go where?” Dylan asked as he pulled out a stool from under the long table.

  Nazeem waved at the boxes as he unpacked the cooler. “I have it grouped,” she said. “The far pile goes down to my car, the pile in the middle goes into the storage downstairs, if we can find room. The front pile I am still winnowing. Yousef has a visiting professor stopping in for a few weeks, and the guy needs a clear table for some work.”

  She smiled. “This is a permanent goodbye to this space. I hope I can get an upgrade to an office with a window when I come back from maternity leave.”

  “Dream on.” Dylan snorted. “Who’s the guy coming in?”

  “Dr. Peter Ackler,” Nazeem’s tone went from bubbly to deadpan. “He is undertaking a most important liverwort survey.”

  “Be still, my heart.”

  Nazeem laughed.

  Dylan grinned back at her. He shoveled in a glorious mouthful of breakfast, swallowed and said, “Did you hear about the moss-growing gig?”

  “Yes.” When Nazeem smiled broadly, a deep dimple appeared on the right side of her face. “If I wasn’t about to pop a kid, I’d be giving you competition for the job.”

  Dylan grunted as he bit into a falafel-filled pita. “And you’d win,” he said, shifting the food to one side of his mouth as he spoke. “You know the botany of this area a lot better than I do.”

  “That’s nice of you to say.” Nazeem leaned back in her office chair. “I’m thinking about studying our area Myxogastria during my maternity break. I know the common species, but there’s so much more to learn. If you find any slime molds, will you be a dear and snap some photos for me?”

  “Sure.” He hesitated. “I know Stemonitis. That genus looks like a pile of licorice sticks or a party of corndogs. And Badhamia looks like a cluster of grapes. I don’t know much more than that.”

  “Always food with you,” Nazeem teased. “I’ll bet you know Fuligo septica, the dog-vomit slime mold.”

  “Yeah.” Dylan snorted. “I do know that one. Looks exactly like something Rover would barf up.”

  “Don’t worry too much about knowing the species. If I see anything interesting in your photos today or tomorrow, I may be able to waddle out and take a closer look.”

  “Deal.” Dylan looked around the office.

  “It’s a lot,” Nazeem admitted. “My husband can help me if we don’t get everything done.” She hesitated. “But he has guard drill this weekend. It’s a busy time for him.”

  “Don’t worry. Let me finish your mom’s great food, and I’ll get started,” Dylan said. “We’ll get your stuff shifted, then I’ll go grow moss.”

  A slime mold spore will produce one or more daughter masses, each with a haploid or half number of chromosomes.

  Chapter Four

  One of the joys of an ADHD brain was crushing a hustle. Dylan could read between the lines. Nazeem was nine months pregnant, but she’d move things herself rather than ask more of her husband, Harris.

  Harris was a good guy. Dylan liked him. Harris taught middle-school science, coached a youth soccer team and served in the National Guard. He also was fiercely proud of Nazeem’s pursuit of a Ph.D.

  They were a busy couple. Which meant Dylan moving Nazeem’s stuff mattered.

  He took a few minutes to shovel in more of the food Nazeem offered. It was an injustice to the cook, he thought, to eat such good food so fast, but he was on a mission. Swallowing a last chunk of chicken, he coughed, then said, “I’ll go get the cargo elevator keycard and a cart.”

  “I think Margaux is busy,” Nazeem said, her hands stilling on a pile of books. “There’s a moving dolly in the lab closet. We could just bump the dolly down the stairs.”

  Dylan grinned. He knew Margaux intimidated the graduate students. The silver-haired departmental administrative assistant had dark eyebrows she used efficiently and effectively. One lifted eyebrow could say, “Not a chance
in hell,” and a lifted eyebrow with a hard stare could signal a grad student’s future in administrative Siberia.

  “A cart and the cargo elevator would work better. I’ll be back.” Dylan left Nazeem’s closet of an office and sprinted down the corridor.

  Moments later he skidded to a stop next to Margaux, who was typing on a computer keyboard. She lifted an elegant eyebrow in query.

  “Moving Nazeem,” Dylan panted. “I’ve got an hour to give her. Service elevator keycard?”

  Margaux gave a minute nod of her head. She smoothly extracted her closely-guarded key card from a plastic holder on an ID lanyard and handed it to Dylan.

  He grinned at her. “I don’t even have to give a pound of flesh in exchange?”

  Margaux laughed.

  Dylan turned and sprinted away.

  He spent the next forty-five minutes in roadrunner mode. He snagged not one, but two industrial carts from a laboratory, promising an ecologist that he’d be back shortly.

  Then it was back to Nazeem, who had several book boxes packed and taped. Dylan loaded the carts at her direction, one for the basement storage area and one for her vehicle. He pushed the loaded carts into the corridor and yelled, “Coming through” as he ran, pushing one cart and pulling another.

  Fifteen minutes later he returned at a gallop, empty carts rattling. Breathing deeply, he loaded more material.

  After a second round of deliveries to the storeroom and Nazeem’s car, Dylan raced the carts back to the ecology lab, stopping next to restore the keycard to Margaux, who blessed him with a silent smile.

  Dylan jogged down the corridor to the botany lab to liberate the moving dolly. He’d left Nazeem cleaning out her desk drawers, which should result in just one more large box.

  After rapidly wheeling the dolly into Nazeem’s office, Dylan came to a skidding halt. “Last stop!” He bowed, twirling a hand with a dramatic flourish.

  Nazeem clapped her hands. “Thank you! I am amazed.”

  She looked up at the wall clock. “Forty minutes to do what I thought would take me all morning.”