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making my bed, I found one thing that puzzled me. There was fine granular dirt on the pillow and top sheet. I wondered about it for some time, but I could think ofnothing that could cause it. I brushed it off. There wasn’t much of it.
    When there was nothing else I could do, I decided that I might as well get my car. I certainly couldn’t take the body anywhere on my back. If I was going to move it, I had to have a car. I phoned a cab and it arrived in ten minutes. I got the extra key from the table drawer, and went out, testing the lock on the door after it shut behind me.
    The driver took me to the club, mentioning several times what a fine day it really was. My black Merc sat dozing in the sun. I drove it back to the apartment, my heart bumping. I expected sirens and a ring of prowl cars around the place. It was unchanged. Bees clambered over dandelions and it was shady under the elms of the side yard.
    Back in the apartment I looked out the window at my car. Object: to get body from closet into trunk compartment of car. There was no guarantee that Mrs. Speers, my busybody landlady, wouldn’t be watching from one of her many windows. The body must not only appear to be something else, I should be able to prove it was something else if questioned later. The body would have to be wrapped in something disposable. I had heard of the police using a vacuum cleaner on cars and then doing spectroanalysis of face powder and such like. And making identification from a single human hair.
    I knew what I could use to wrap her up. In the back end of the car there was an old tarpaulin, a greasy mess. I had laid it under the wheels during the winter to get out of heavy snow. On the coldest nights I had kept it over the hood of the ungaraged Merc, a hundred-watt bulb on an extension cord burning inside the hood. I went out through my kitchen and looked at the collection of debris in the attached shed. Warren has garbage collection, but they do not take cans and bottles. You save those until you have enough to warrant a trip to the dump. I had a reasonable collection.
    My plan was set and it seemed practical. I went out and backed the car up close to my front door. I opened the rear compartment and took the tarp into the house. I loaded a small cardboard carton with cans and bottles and took it out and put it in the rear compartment, well over to one side. Mrs. Speers appeared with her usual magic, materializing sixty feet away, strolling toward me, smiling, a big unbending woman in a black and white Sunday print, wearing one white canvas work glove and carrying a pair of small red garden shears.
    “Going to the dump, Mr. Sewell?”
    “I guess it’s about time. Thought I’d drop some stuff off.”
    “Oh dear, do you think you could take mine too this time? Joseph forgot it when he did the yard work Thursday.”
    “Gee, I’d be glad to, but I’ve got a lot of my own. Tell you what, after work Monday I’ll run it over for you.”
    “I don’t want to put you out.”
    “That’s okay. I’d do it today, but I’m going right on up to the lake.”
    “Joseph is getting so absent-minded.”
    She wanted desperately to have a nice little chat. It was too bad that she hadn’t rented her apartment to someone she could have talked to. The woman was obviously bored and lonely. Her life had been busy with husband and kids. Now the kids were grown and had moved away, and the husband was dead.
    “Monday for sure, Mrs. Speers,” I said.
    “You’re so kind.” She smiled and sidled off to snip something. I went in and shut the door. I spread the tarp on the floor in front of the closet and opened the door. I felt squeamish; I didn’t want to touch her again. I went in and fumbled with the belt. I had to stop and then try again. It came loose and I slipped it off over her head and unloosened it the rest of the way. I found two hairs clinging to the fabric, two of her black hairs.I brushed them off onto the tarp, rolled the belt up and