Free The Balloon Man by Charlotte MacLeod

consider a sudden volcanic eruption trouble. We dashed around closing doors and windows, so the awful stuff
     didn't get into the house, but we couldn't see a thing outside.” Sarah managed a feeble laugh. “Davy adored it.”
    “Martians?”
    “Of course. It's thinning a little, isn't it?”
    “Seems to be. I'd better go back down and see if there's any sign of that fool driver. How about you calling the police?”
    Sarah wasn't falling for any of that he-man stuff. “How about you sitting right here on the steps and resting your leg? You
     said the car had gone.”
    “Okay, if you say so.” Max was quite willing to bask in wifely concern. With all of them running around checking doors and
     windows, a would-be intruder would have been spotted immediately. “You might bring me one of the portable phones.”
    In addition to the official instruments in the office there were telephones, corded and cordless, all over the house. Max
     ran up ferocious bills keeping in touch with his personal secret service connections at strategic points at home and abroad.
     Sarah opted for a cordless one, those being ofthe sort that the neighbors could tap into should they desire to do so, as they frequently did. It was neighborly gestures
     like this that kept the Bittersohns' popularity rating high. They seldom had time for socializing, so the least they could
     do, Sarah argued, was stay in touch via this modern version of the old party line. She carried the phone out onto the step,
     pushed the 911 button, passed the handset over to Max, and asked him to give Sergeant Jofferty her regards.
    Max knew everybody on the local police force. He was a third-generation immigrant from Saugus, and everybody knew his brother-in-law,
     Ira, the only honest garage owner in the area, and his uncle Jake, one of the few honest lawyers in the area. Max had a more
     intimate acquaintance with the local constabulary as a result of his involvement in several local crimes, most of them involving
     Sarah. She and Sergeant Jofferty had formed the foundation of a warm friendship on that fateful day when her elderly first
     husband and his autocratic mother had hurtled over a cliff into the sea in their 1920 Milburn Electric.
    Jofferty sent his regards to Sarah, and then listened in only mild surprise as Max told him what had happened. He'd got used
     to peculiar goings-on at the Kelling place.
    “Smoke bomb? You mean one of those things we used to set off on Halloween?”
    Max admitted he'd set them off, too, and explained the difference between those examples of boyish joie de vivre and the industrial-size
     variety that had been used. He couldgive no accurate information as to how long a smoke bomb took to disperse and was not inclined to acquire such data the hard
     way, but he didn't think it would take very long unless the wind backed around and blew the cloud inshore again, which it
     probably wouldn't. In fact, it was dispersing rapidly. However, he advised Jofferty to take it easy when he approached the
     Kelling place, since there had already been one accident, though it obviously hadn't been serious.
    What with one thing and another, Sarah was kept on the doorstep longer than she'd expected to be. A mitigating circumstance
     was that Max was holding her within easy kissing range while getting on with his telephoned report. The circumstances proved
     to be so distracting that they were still sitting there when the police car drove up and Jofferty got out.
    “All clear now,” he reported unnecessarily, since they could see for themselves that the worst was over. “You folks okay?”
    “Yes, except for Max's leg,” Sarah said. “Let me have a look, darling.”
    “What happened to ft?”
    “I fell over Davy's alligator,” Max said. Knowing Sarah would do it herself if he didn't, he rolled up his pant leg. Sarah
     let out a cry of distress.
    “Darling, that's a terrible bruise. You couldn't have done it tripping over Davy's toy.”
    “It's