Frye had been at the scene less than ten hours, yet with the help of Williams and Thomas, and his own observations, he could already sketch the outline of what happened inside the store.  Frye could even supply the reason for Mays’s death.

“He was trying to use somebody or something,” Felton Thomas had said of Zeigler near the end of the interview.  Don Frye agreed.  He believed that Zeigler had brought Williams and Charlie Mays to the store—Williams on the pretext of an errand, Mays with the promise of a TV set—so that he could kill them and arrange a fake robbery, make it appear that the two black men had killed his wife and her parents.  For this reason he had stuffed cash and receipt slips into Mays’s pants.  The purpose of the bizarre trip to the orange grove was to get gunshot residue on the hands of Mays and Thomas and to put their fingerprints on the  guns.  He had phoned the Van Deventer home and had asked specifically for his friend Don Ficke, on the assumption that Ficke would be inclined to accept his explanation.

But why should Zeigler kill at all?

Proof of motive is not legally necessary for a murder conviction.  As a practical matter, though, jurors in a difficult case often want an explanation of motive before they will convict.  That would be especially true in any trial of Tommy Zeigler, who had so much to lose.  Why would he jeopardize his wealth and position?

Frye didn’t know the answer yet.  But he knew who did.