Perry and Virginia Edwards, or the store pickup truck, which he drove most of the time anyway. 

It put Dunaway’s mind at ease.

Dunaway finished lunch early and decided to take a short nap in the storeroom at the rear of the building.  He lay down on a furniture pad and was dozing when Charlie Mays pulled up to load his linoleum.  He recognized the sound of Mays’s voice, but the words were indistinct.  Later he was unable to account any of the conversation.

Around four in the afternoon, a couple of hours before closing, Curtis Dunaway went with Zeigler on their second delivery trip of the day.

Near the end of the trip, Zeigler mentioned to Dunaway that he would be returning to the store that evening to pick up the gas grill for his father, the Edwardses’ recliner, and Don Ficke’s potted plant.  Dunaway volunteered to help him, but Zeigler said he didn’t want to interrupt Dunaway’s family gathering; he would get Edward Williams to help him, he said.

That afternoon delivery was a large one.  They separated it into two shipments, and when they dropped off the last piece their working day was almost ended.  In four years, Curtis Dunaway and Tommy Zeigler had ridden through West County hundreds of times on such errands.

This would be the last.

*

When they returned home in the afternoon, Charlie and Mattie Mays laid down their new linoleum with the help of Brian Nedd.  Around this time, Mrs. Mays testified, Charlie told her about the color TV.  He said that the down payment they had made that morning covered both the linoleum and the television.  Tommy Zeigler was giving them a bargain price, $128 for a beautiful console set.  They rearranged the living-room furniture to make a space for the console.

It was going to be a good Christmas.  It got even better that afternoon, when someone from the First Presbyterian Church in Oakland dropped off a basket of food and about $40 that had been collected from the congregation.  The church’s pastor, Herman “Mickey” Fisher, had asked Oakland’s police chief, Robert Thompson, to give it to a needy and deserving family.  Thompson had chosen Charlie and Mattie Mays and their sons.

Thompson liked Charlie Mays.  Charlie did not smoke or drink or cuss.  He coached the local softball teams, he worked hard, and his children were well-behaved.  You did not see the Mays boys on the streets after dark.

Sometime that afternoon, Tommy Zeigler arrived at the Mays home, making his late round of deliveries.  He had brought the bed that Mattie Mays wanted.  According to Mrs. Mays, Zeigler mentioned the TV again, and again her husband