Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery

One

It was a winter afternoon. Briersville Park was sodden and glistening. Rain pelted down, hitting the vegetable garden path with a vengeance, smacking its green algae surface so that each drop split into a hundred smaller drops that bounced up again. Two frogs hid under the outstretched leg of a stone cupid in the center of a pond, and the orange fish there dived to its murky bottom for shelter.

Water dripped down AH2’s dark face. His black, snug, weatherproof trousers and jacket were covered in mud, since he’d just spent fifteen minutes crawling through three llama fields toward this grand house, Briersville Park. Now he pulled his ski mask back behind his ears so that he could better hear. Children’s voices, whoops, and shouts, and the sound of barks were coming from the other side of a high wall.

There was a heavy door set in the brickwork, but he didn’t dare use that. Instead, taking first a furtive look about to check he wasn’t watched, he put his hands on the leafless branches of an old apple tree that was fastened to the wall. With the ease of a trained soldier, he climbed up to its crest.

There she was. He was certain. The alien girl who went by the name Molly Moon was playing at the edge of a swimming pool with two boys who AH2 guessed were the same age as the Moon girl—about eleven years old. One was the black boy AH2 recognized from an ad that he and Molly Moon had starred in. Beside him was another boy who looked like he was the alien girl’s twin. He had similar light brown curly hair and the same potato-shaped nose and identical strong but closely set green eyes. Was this boy an alien, too? AH2 twitched. Then he got a shock. All of a sudden a large, gray object that he had presumed to be a sunken blowup dinghy emerged from the pool. It was an elephant, and it squirted a few gallons of water at the children, drenching them further and making the small black pug that was with them bark. The children laughed and shouted at the elephant before it tipped its body back toward the deep end for another swim.

AH2 shook his head in nonplussed amazement, then returned to his task. Quickly he unzipped his front jacket pocket and pulled out a small, loaded rifle, resting it on the top of the wall. He peered through its sights. Molly Moon’s head and shoulders came into view. Her wet hair fell to one side, exposing a fairly wide expanse of her neck. AH2 gritted his teeth. If only Molly Moon would stop jumping up and down and if only that look-alike boy would get out of the way. AH2 waited patiently until Molly Moon’s neck was aligned in the red target circle of his rifle’s sights again. He waited for the elephant. His aim was to use the animal as a distraction and to shoot at the same moment as the elephant hosed the children down.

The elephant rose up from the water and fired. At the same time, AH2 pulled the trigger. His dart hit first; the water hit Molly Moon a split second later. Everyone screeched, and in the commotion of the moment Molly Moon’s yelp was lost. She reached up and cupped her neck.

“Ow, Amrit!” she complained. “That water had a stone in it!”

“Bingo!” AH2 murmured. He dropped silently from the garden wall and ran toward the llama fields. Running swiftly and darting behind the animal-shaped bushes there whenever possible, he made his way to the far woods beyond, to where his black car was parked. Slipping into the front seat, he took off his ski mask and his jacket and reached for the brown package on the passenger seat.

Drying his hands, he unpacked the red, radiolike box inside it and pulled out its antenna. Switching on the device, he pointed it in the direction of Briersville Park, to its gardens and its swimming pool. The machine bleeped reassuringly.

“Got you, alien Moon girl,” AH2 said with a satisfied smack of his lips. He picked up his phone and tapped in a message to his superior, AH1.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.