Chapter 2: The Big Lie

“Now when they get here stick to the story.”

“I will, don’t worry.”

Sheriff Billings was first thru the door. Suzy lay dead on the floor!

Mother was sitting at the kitchen table crying. Martha sat beside her holding her head on her shoulder.

“There, there Fran it’s over. She is not going hurt you now.”

“Martha! What the hell happened?”

“Sheriff last Thursday we were having lunch at Bubba’s bar-b-que across from the Crossroads Motel. We saw Suzy arrive with Paul, that attorney from Green’s law firm. They went into room 120 and stayed for two hours. We decided not to tell Jack or Paul’s wife Mable, the District attorney. We thought we could talk to Suzy and make her see the error of her ways. We wanted to take her to the church and have her confess her sins and vow to never do it again. We told her if she did not do that we would tell their spouses. Suzy is hot tempered everybody knows that and she got mad. I mean really mad. She threw that coffee cup right past Fran’s head and it broke against the wall.”

The Sheriff noticed the broken coffee cup.

“Then she started calling us all kinds of names I would prefer not to repeat. She has a vile mouth! When Fran said she was going to tell not only Jack this evening when he gets off work she is calling the D.A. and exposing the affair Suzy went crazy! She said we were not telling anyone. She picked a knife up off the sink and came at Fran. You know I have a ccp (concealed carry permit) and I have taken to carrying Bobby’s service pistol since his death. May he rest in peace. (Both her and mother bow their heads at the mention of her dead husband and quietly said, “May he rest in peace. Hallueah!).

“She charged Fran with the knife and I shot her. Twice in the chest. Center mass. Right? Just like you instructed me in that self-defense class you teach.”

The Sheriff had the knife and the pieces of the broken cup saved for evidence and both were found to have Suzy’s finger prints on them. Mother told the same story but from her point of view. The D.A. ruled it a case of self-defense and for the next ten years nothing more was said. Martha died in her sleep about a year ago. Mother was on her death bed dying of bone cancer when I found out the truth about what happened that day.