“Okay, fine,” Carter said, and started to walk away.

As he passed the foot of the bed, one of her shoes suddenly popped off the end of her heel and stabbed itself into the spread. He paused, starting to make an ugly comment about the fact that she was undressing for the wrong man, when something about her position struck him as odd. He leaned over the bed frame and tentatively ran his forefinger across the bottom of her foot. Her immobility scared the hell out of him. Betty Jo was as ticklish as they came.

“Oh, God,” Carter muttered, and ran around to the edge of the bed, grabbing her by the shoulder. “Betty Jo, this isn’t funny!”

He rolled her onto her back, and when he got a firsthand look at the dark, red smear of lipstick across her face and her wide, sightless eyes staring up at him, he began to shake.

“Betty, honey…”

She didn’t move.

He thumped her in the middle of the chest, noting absently that she was not wearing a bra, and then started to sweat.

“Betty Jo, wake up!” he screamed, and pushed up and down between her breasts, trying to emulate CPR techniques he didn’t actually know.

The only motion he got out of her was a lilt and a sway from her buxom bosom as he hammered about her chest, trying to make her breathe.

“No! God, no!”

Suddenly he jerked his hands to his stomach, as if he’d been burned by the touch of her skin. To his utter dismay, he felt bile rising, and barely made it to the bathroom before it spewed.

Several hours later, he heard the hall clock strike two times, and realized that, in four hours, it would be time to get up. He giggled at the thought, then buried his face in his hands. That was silly. How could one get up, when one had never been down? Betty Jo’s body lay right where he’d left it, half-on, half-off the bed, as if he wasn’t sure what to do next.

And therein lay Carter’s problem. He didn’t know what to do next. Twice since the deed, he’d reached for the phone to call the police, and each time he’d paused, remembering what would happen when they came. There was no way he could explain that it was really all her fault. That she’d ruined him and his reputation by tarnishing her own.

And that was when it struck him. It was her fault. And by God, he shouldn’t have to pay!

Suddenly, a way out presented itself, and he bolted from the chair and began rolling her up in the stained bedspread, then fastening it in place with two of his belts. One he buckled just above her head, the other at her ankles. He stepped back to survey his work, and had an absent thought that Betty Jo would hate knowing that she was going to her Maker looking like a tamale. Without giving himself time to reconsider, he threw her over his shoulder and carried her, fireman style, out of the kitchen and into the attached garage, dumping her into the trunk of his car.

Grabbing a suitcase from the back of a closet, he raced to their bedroom and began throwing items of her clothing haphazardly into the bag, before returning to the car. As he tossed the suitcase in the trunk with her body, he took great satisfaction in the fact that he had to lie on the trunk to get it closed.

As he backed from the garage and headed uptown toward an all-night money machine, the deviousness of his own thoughts surprised him. He would never have imagined himself being able to carry off something like this, yet it was happening just the same. If he was going to make this work, it had to look like Betty Jo took money with her when she ran. With this in mind, he continued toward the town’s only ATM.

As he pulled up, the spotlight above the money machine glared in his eyes. He jumped out of the car, and with a sharp blow of his fist, knocked out the Plexiglas and the bulb, leaving himself in the bank drive-through in sudden darkness. Minutes later, with the cash in his pocket, he was back in the car and heading out of town toward the city dump.

Ever thankful that Larner’s Mill was too small-town in its thinking to ever put up a gate or a lock, Carter drove right through and up to the pit without having to brake for anything more than a possum ambling across the road in the dark.

When he got out, he was shaking with a mixture of exertion and excitement. As he threw the suitcase over the edge, he took a deep breath, watching it bounce end over end, down the steep embankment. When he lifted his wife from the trunk and sent her after it, he started to grin. But the white bedspread in which she was wrapped stood out like a beacon in the night. He could just imagine what would hit the fan if Betty Jo turned up in this condition. He had to cover up the spread.

It was while he was turning in a circle, looking for something with which to shovel, that he saw the bulldozer off to the side.

That’s it, he thought. All he needed to do was shove some dirt down on top. Tomorrow was trash day. By the time the trash trucks made the rounds and dumped the loads, she’d be right where she belonged, buried with the rest of the garbage.

It took a bit for him to figure out how to work the bulldozer’s controls, but desperation was a shrewd taskmaster, and Carter Foster was as desperate as they came. Within the hour, a goodly portion of dirt had been pushed in on top of the latest addition to the city dump, and Betty Jo Foster’s burial was slightly less dignified than she would have hoped.

Minutes later, Carter was on his way home to shower and change. As he pulled into his garage, he pressed the remote control and breathed a great sigh of satisfaction as the door dropped shut behind him.

It was over!

His feet were dragging as he went inside, but his lawyer mind was already preparing the case he would present to his coworkers. Exactly how much he would be willing to humble himself was still in the planning stage. If they made fun of him behind his back because he’d been dumped, he didn’t think he would care. The last laugh would be his.

Days later, while Betty Jo rotted along with the rest of the garbage in Larner’s Mill, Glory Dixon was making her second sweep through the house, looking behind chairs and under cushions, trying to find her keys. But the harder she looked the more certain she was that someone else and not her carelessness was to blame.

Her brother came into the kitchen just as she dumped the trash onto the floor and began sorting through the papers.

“J.C., have you seen my keys? I can’t find them anywhere.”

“Nope.” He pulled the long braid she’d made of her hair. “Why don’t you just psych them out?”

Glory ignored the casual slander he made of her psychic ability and removed her braid from his hand. “You know it doesn’t work like that. I never know what I’m going to see. If I did, I would have told on you years ago for filching Granny’s blackberry pies.”

He was still laughing as their father entered the house by the back door.

“Honey, are you ready to go?” Rafe asked. “We’ve got a full morning and then some before we’re through in town.”

She threw up her hands in frustration. “I can’t find my keys.”

Her father shrugged, then had a thought. “Did you let that pup in the house last night?”

The guilty expression on her face was answer enough.

“Then there’s your answer,” he muttered. “What that blamed pooch hasn’t already chewed up, he’s buried. You’ll be lucky if you ever see them again.”

“Shoot,” Glory muttered, and started out the door in search of the dog.

“Let it wait until we come home,” Rafe said. “I’ve got keys galore. If you don’t find yours, we’ll get copies made of mine. Now grab your grocery list. Time’s a’wastin’.”

“Don’t forget my Twinkies,” J.C. said, and slammed the kitchen door behind him as he exited the house.

Glory grinned at her brother’s request, then did as her father asked. As she and Rafe drove out of the yard, they could see the back end of the John Deere tractor turning the corner in the lane. J.C. was on his way to the south forty. It was time to work ground for spring planting.