She saw Mr. Michelson and another man standing on the deserted street beside the alley entrance. But where was Mitzi? She slowed down then, shocked, as she saw Mr. Michelson raise his arm but fail to shield himself from the blow the other man delivered. She stopped her car in the middle of the street as Mr. Michelson fell to the pavement and the other man knelt beside him and began to go through his pockets. She got out of the car and hurried breathlessly back to where Mr. Michelson lay groaning and holding his head. She helped him get to his feet and he told her that the man had stolen his wallet and the reward money he had brought with him.
“But what about Mitzi?”
Mr. Michelson grimaced and touched the base of his skull. “He laughed when I asked him where Mitzi was. He just laughed and then he hit me.”
“Call the police at once.”
Mr. Michelson said he didn’t want any trouble. If he called the police, their activities might scare the man away for good, and then perhaps he’d never get Mitzi back.
Miss Evangeline secretly decided she would personally report the incident to Sergeant MacReynolds, but when she arrived home later, after dropping Mr. Michelson off, she decided it wouldn’t do any good because the flying saucer still sat smack in the middle of her flowerbed, glowing greenly in the light of the moon. Patrolman Carson had failed to remove it.
The next afternoon, Miss Evangeline sat close to the mulberry bushes on the mall, looking as inconspicuous as just another berry. She had planned it that way. The Monster might appear at any minute and she didn’t want it to spot her before she had a chance to sound an alarm.
She had remembered to bring her glasses with her this time, so she clearly recognized Patrolman Carson while he was still some distance away from her.
As he came up to her, he said, “Hello, Miss Evangeline. I’d planned to give your flying saucer a ticket for illegal parking yesterday, but when I got to your place it had gone. I did notice, though, that your jack-in-the-pulpits weren’t a bit crushed.”
She eyed him suspiciously. It was true that her flowers, this morning, had stood as straight and brightly staunch as if no saucer had ever landed on them, but that would undoubtedly have something to do with the invaders’ advanced aerodynamics. Carson was lying to her because the saucer had still been there when she arrived home last night. She was about to accuse him of lying when a new thought occurred to her. Perhaps the saucer had taken off during the day and then returned later. That would explain why Carson hadn’t seen it. Perhaps he wasn’t lying after all. She began to feel more kindly toward him. She searched in her knitting bag and brought out a candy bar which she handed to him with a conciliatory smile. He took it, touched his cap, and was off down one of the paths, whistling a tune by the Beatles.
Miss Evangeline surveyed her domain with a certain uneasiness. She was thinking about Mitzi and poor Mr. Michelson and his sad little boy. The theft was a shameful thing to have happen right under the nose, so to speak, of the mayor. If the opposition party ever found out about it, it might mean political disaster for the incumbent — a lost election. She tried not to think about it any more, vowing that she would not tell tales out of school, and Mr. Michelson, she recalled, had said he wouldn’t report the matter to the police. So perhaps all would still be well for the mayor. She concentrated on the others who shared the mall with her, counting them, categorizing them.
An old man over there feeding pigeons from a brown paper bag — that would be Joe Carlotto, who was on Social Security; two ladies, almost as old as herself, strolling along the river promenade; the inevitable children — everywhere, the nannies with their prams.
But who in the world was that one in the white uniform and the bleached hair? She looked like a fugitive from the chorus line of some cheap nightclub. Miss Evangeline didn’t mean to be unkind; it was simply that she was a keen and usually correct observer of people and their characters.
The girl — she couldn’t have been more than twenty-five — sat down on a nearby bench, the pram she had been wheeling parked beside her. She unrolled the glossy magazine she had been carrying tucked under one arm. Miss Evangeline pushed her glasses up on her nose and stared at the cover:
A boy and girl, arm in arm and oblivious to Miss Evangeline, the mall, and all the rest of the world, strolled by. Miss Evangeline knew she had nothing in her knitting bag that they might want or could possibly use. They were young and had each other. She sighed and closed her eyes and dozed in the spattering of warm sunlight that spilled through the leaves and landed on her thin shoulders.
When she woke up again, something was wrong. She could feel it! The children were all right. All the dogs were walking safely on their leashes. The mayor’s mansion was still there. Then what?
