Most of all, they worked as if they still needed the money.  Eunice taught school through much of her marriage.  Tommy immersed himself in the businesses.  Beulah ran the store every day, usually from opening to closing.  Tom senior had worked at the furniture store every day, often at the tasks of a minimum-wage laborer, until he suffered a stroke in July 1975.  The Zeiglers did not avoid drudgery.

This morning Tommy Zeigler himself cut Mattie Mays’s linoleum.  He unwound it from the rolls on the wall, using a heavy metal crank that was kept in a box on the back wall.  He sized the pieces and rolled them again, then placed them in the rear storage area.

Around midday of Christmas Eve, Edward Williams stopped at the store to see Tommy Zeigler.

Williams had known the family for nearly twenty years, as a customer and a part-time employee.  He had helped to remodel the Zeiglers’ apartments and had worked on the construction crew that had built the Dillard Street store.  In the past week, he had worked around Tommy and Eunice’s house and replaced a broken window in one of the apartment complexes.

Earlier in the week, Zeigler had asked Williams to help deliver several large gifts on Christmas Eve: a gas grill that he and Eunice had bought for Tom Zeigler, a La-Z-Boy recliner for Perry and Virginia Edwards, and a big potted plant that Winter Garden’s chief of police, Don Ficke, had bought for his wife.

This morning Tommy Zeigler was cutting linoleum when Williams came into the store.  Williams gave Zeigler the key to the apartment he had repaired.

Now (as William’s later testified) Zeigler reminded him that he needed help in the evening. According to Williams, Zeigler told him to be at 75 Temple Grove at 7:30, and they would drive to the store together.

Zeigler had done Williams many favors.  In the past two days alone, he had loaned Williams $80 for a deposit on his new apartment and had called the local power company so that Williams—who still had a disputed bill from a previous address—could have electricity when he moved in.

Edward Williams, in turn, had done many favors for Tommy Zeigler.

“He’d say, Edward, I want you to do something for me,” Williams testified later.  “If I could get there, I do it.  Edward, I want this thing done here.  I say, okay, I try to make it possibly.  I do that because the whole time I know Tommy, if I asked Tommy to do me a favor, he helped me.”

Once again, Williams did not refuse Tommy Zeigler.

He would be there, he said: 7:30.