Free Thistle and Twigg by Mary Saums

special.”
    While the bird circled and headed out over the big bluffs, Jane shielded her eyes with her hand to watch him. Meanwhile, I stepped behind the boulders.
    Grass grew in scrubby bunches right behind the rocks and then got higher, three or four inches, and thicker toward the edge of the bluffs.
    I saw my beer can. I knew it was mine because it was on the end and had a picture of a red dog on it. When I reached down to pick it up, I saw something else in the grass.
    “Somebody has lost a coat,” I said, looking down on the dark green and brown fabric in a camouflage pattern. I stood up straight as Jane walked up behind me.
    We had both stepped closer to the coat when Jane screamed like a wild hyena right in my ear. When I saw what Jane saw, I stayed cool and tried to calm her down. Thank goodness I was there with her, or I don’t know what she’d have done, as upset as she was. I couldn’t really blame her because it sure was a horrible sight.
    The coat still had a man in it. A dead one.

nine
Jane Calls the Cops
    P hoebe screamed bloody murder, waving her arms in the air and pulling at her hair as she hopped frantically from one tiptoe to the other, wailing and crying uncontrollably for several minutes. I made her sit on a boulder a good distance away from the body and out of sight of it. I encouraged her to breathe deeply. I spoke soothingly but I doubt she heard a word due to her loud sobbing.
    “Did we do that?” Phoebe said, once she gained control of herself. Her voice quivered when she spoke. She clapped her hands tightly over her mouth so her words were muted, as were her hiccoughs. I felt terrible for her. I wouldn’t have thought it possible for her skin to be any whiter than it was normally, but all color had absolutely drained from her face.
    I’d seen quite a few dead bodies in my day an unpleasant aspect of the part-time work I did a number of years earlier, never thinking that doing so could be seen as an advantage. I was clearly better prepared than Phoebe for the sight. When I went back for another look, she insisted on coming as well.
    Blood stained the man’s back. We could see a hole of darker red, almost black, in the center. I bent down to feel his neck, then his wrist.
    “No, dear. We didn’t do it. He’s quite cold.”
    “For heaven sakes, Jane, how can you touch him?” Phoebe said, as she jumped again, her hands fluttering like birds’ wings in front of her face. “I wonder who he is.”
    I lay my hand on his shoulder to raise him up enough for Phoebe to possibly identify the poor man.
    “Don’t do it again!”
    “I thought you wanted to know who he is. Was.”
    “Not that bad. I don’t recognize him anyway.”
    “Right. I’ll call the police then.”
    “
We
will. I’m not staying here with the—the—him.”
    We went to Cal’s house first, in case he had returned, to let him know what happened. It was then that the significance of his parked green truck occurred to me. Either he didn’t go out of town as planned, or he’d caught a ride. Or he was still home. When he didn’t answer the door, Phoebe and I hurried to my house to use the phone.
    Both of Tullulah’s police cars came within five minutes. The officers asked that we wait by the road for Detective Waters. Phoebe reacquainted herself with each officer. She appeared to have known them since they were children, and verified each man’s personal histories, tracing their lineages through mothers, aunts, grandfathers, and distant cousins with whom she was, of course, familiar. Not many minutes later, a white unmarked police car arrived. A tall gentleman in a navy jacket, red patterned tie, and khaki trousers got out of the car and came toward us. The officers followed, all noticeably nervous in his presence. The detective took no notice of any of them.
    The stonelike set of his large, rough features and his shiny, solid black eyes invited no pleasantries. It was a face intent on one purpose. From the moment