“It’s slime mold,” Nick announced after he’d picked up his phone and met Amanda in the common room.
“Slime mold?” she said.
“Yes. It’s kind of like a fungus, but it isn’t one. We’re seeing the myxogastria, which is a macroscopic slime mold.” He held out his phone to show her the picture. There the gluppy thing was, in living color. Gosh it was ugly.
“Say that fast three times,” she said.
“I’m trying to tell you something important. Normally this slime mold exists as a one-celled organism, like an amoeba, but when its food is in short supply, the cells start coming together and moving as a single animal. They become sensitive to airborne chemicals and can tell when there’s food around. See?” He flicked to some more pictures.
“You’re joking.” She looked at the images. They were ugly, but not nearly as bad as looking at the things in person, or in thing.
“I’m not. See for yourself.” He handed her the phone. She examined a couple more shots and looked up.
“So the one-celled organisms have bonded together and gone in search of food, which is the pink stuff,” she said.
“Correct.”
“And the pink stuff is . . .”
“Powdered sugar.”
“Really?”
“Yes, ma’am. They love it. Apparently researchers use it as bait. Do you know that some scientists have got slime mold to solve a maze by putting sugar at the end of the correct path? Here, I’ll show you.” He grabbed for the phone.
“You lie,” she said, pulling it away from him.
“No, really. There’s this picture,” he said, trying again.
“Ha ha! Can’t get the phone. Hey—” He was successful this time and held his mobile away from her. She laughed. “That explains a lot. The stuff in the pantry was sugar, which makes sense. Where else would sugar be? The cook has been throwing sugar out, so maybe some leaked while she was moving it and we’ve seen traces of that in various places. The slime mold goes after the sugar because its regular source of food has been disrupted. So if we see slime mold around the school, chances are there’s sugar nearby. Oh yuck. What if there was slime mold in the pantry or the kitchen?” Maybe they’d all been poisoned.
“There’s no sign that that’s happened. I’m sure the cook would have noticed.”
“There’s something weird about that cook. First she steals a bunch of sugar, then she makes a weird phone call, and then—”
“Wait a minute,” he said. “What weird phone call?” Amanda explained what she’d heard in the kitchen. As she spoke he shook his head. “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”
“Not on its own, but it does if you put two and two together, and the cook has obviously been using less sugar. We know that because the desserts are yucky and no one is eating them,” she said trying to get his phone again just to show him she could.
“But why would the cook steal sugar?” he said, using his height advantage to keep the phone from her.
“Maybe she’s fencing it,” she said, stabbing at him with an imaginary sword.
“Oh, come on,” he said grinning. “Again, too many movies.” He was now holding the phone out of reach with one hand and air fencing with the other.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe there’s a black, er, pink market for sugar,” she huffed.
“Why would there be something like that?” he said, pretend-stabbing her on the shoulder.
“Hey, you nicked me, Nick!” She lunged at him with even more determination. “Think about it. If you can create a scarcity, the price of something will rise.”
“That’s pretty fancy footwork, there.” He got her on the other shoulder. “I don’t see how one cook is going to be able to create a scarcity.”
“You think you’re so good, do you?” she said dancing around trying to get behind him. “She’s working with someone. That’s what the phone call is about.”
“Right. Now there’s a sugar mafia.” He was keeping the front of his body to her at all times, despite her efforts. He was obviously loving teasing her.
“Come on. Work with me here.”
“Not a chance. You’ll get me.” He was huffing now too.
“I’ll tell you what I think. I think there’s a sugar-stealing ring, and someone blew up the garage by mistake when they thought they were going to destroy a lot of sugar. En garde!”
“You wish,” he said, sidestepping her imaginary sword again. “And Professor Pickle is in on it?”
“What a thought. Pickles and sugar.” She let the sword fall to her side. “Well, there is such a thing as sweet pickles. But actually, I’d forgotten about him. I suppose that could be true.”
“I don’t know, but I will say that I think we should continue with our movie. Let’s keep documenting and then we’ll see what we’ve got.” He took one last half-hearted stab, then gave up too.
“Good point. We should do those profiles. And actually, I’ve got an idea. We need to start thinking like criminals. We should plan our own crime so we can get inside their heads.”