Her casual smile faded when she saw Elsevan DuPris standing in front of the cash register. The guy gave her the creeps. It's not that he wasn't friendly. In fact, he was a little too friendly. And his southern accent, it was a little too southern. It just sounded fake. Which brought up the question-why? Why would a person stroll around dressed in a white suit and white shoes, twirling a walking stick and talking in an obviously fake southern accent?

DuPris was the editor-owner of the Astral Projector, Roswell's all-alien tabloid. So you had to expect the guy to be a little eccentric. But he was even eccentric in his eccentricity.

"I'm doing a poll for my little paper, and I wondered if you'd be good enough to assist me," DuPris drawled. "I believe there is a connection between a person's ability to roll their tongue and alien inbreeding somewhere in their lineage. I thought it would be interesting to see if we have a greater number of people with this attribute in our fair town, for obvious reasons."

Liz rushed up to the counter and dropped a load of the flying-saucer-shaped sugar bowls. "Sounds interesting. I'd love to see your data sometime, but we're closed now, so-"

"So I'll say good night to you young ladies. And I'll be sure to bring these, uh, experimental results by," DuPris said. He tipped his white Panama hat and sauntered out the door. Liz followed him and locked it the second he stepped outside.

Maria smiled as she kicked off her shoes for the second time. Liz definitely knew how to put people in their place when they needed it. If she hadn't been around, Maria probably would have done the tongue-rolling thing for DuPris, feeling like an idiot the whole time. Then she'd probably have been sucked into a long conversation with him, making feeble comments about needing to get back to work but not actually being able to escape.