Plot
Jewel Mae "Cookie" Orcutt, an elderly dowager in Holly Springs, Mississippi, lives alone in a large house and is helped out daily by Willis Richland, her African American handyman and closest friend. After acting strangely, she commits suicide with one of her late husband Buck's pistols.
Her pretentious niece, Camille, who directs local church theater productions, stops by later that day to borrow a glass fruit bowl. She is accompanied by her witless and submissive younger sister, Cora, with whom she lives. Camille finds Cookie's body in the bedroom and drops the bowl, shattering it and inadvertently cutting herself. Believing that "suicide is a disgrace", Camille eats Cookie's suicide note and attempts to stage her death to look like a robbery-murder. She removes a prized diamond and ruby necklace from Cookie's neck and throws the pistol in the garden (observed while doing so by Ronnie, a young boy who lives next door). Camille coaches Cora to say that Cookie was murdered, and summons Sheriff Lester Boyle to the scene.
Meanwhile Cora's estranged and wayward daughter (and Cookie's grandniece), Emma, returns to town after having moved away following several supposed criminal offenses. Jason, an inept sheriff's deputy investigating Cookie's death, has long been romantically pursuing Emma. Willis is the primary suspect because his fingerprints appear on the gun she used to kill herself, but this is only because he had cleaned her guns the night before at her request. He is detained on suspicion of murder. The same night, Jason encounters Camille and Cora moving into Cookie's house, despite it being an active crime scene, and calls backup to escort them off the property. Cora is shocked to find that Willis is the suspect, Emma openly protests it, and Camille feigns surprise.
Emma visits Willis at the police station, where Boyle and a local attorney, Jack Palmer—both fishing buddies of Willis's—casually play Scrabble with him in his unlocked cell. Willis tells an anecdote about Cookie's prized diamond and ruby necklace, explaining that Buck once had the necklace appraised only to discover its jewels were fake, a fact he never disclosed to Cookie. Otis Tucker, a detective from a larger jurisdiction, arrives that night and begins questioning locals. Protesting Willis's detainment, Emma refuses to leave the police station until he is freed. She and Jason also frequently sneak away to have sex in empty offices at the station.
The next day, Easter Sunday, Emma arranges a holiday meal for Willis and herself in his cell. Meanwhile, Cora and Camille return to Cookie's home and begin cleaning her bloodied bedding and removing the crime scene tape, assuming they are to inherit the house. They are interrupted by Jack, who arrives to look for Cookie's will in a kitchen cookie jar, which Cora locates for him to Camille's frustration. At the station, Ronnie's father brings him in to recount seeing Camille throw the pistol in the garden; moreover, Camille's rare AB negative blood is recovered from the crime scene, excluding Willis as a suspect.
That night, Camille and Cora prepare to debut their production of Salome at the local church, in which Cora, Jason and Jack star. After police match the blood type to Camille, they descend upon the church as Cora is enticingly performing the play's Dance of the Seven Veils sequence. Cora is left free of her sister's influence when Camille is arrested and taken to the station, where Willis is prepared to be freed. Jack arrives to disclose Cookie's will, which bequeaths her entire estate to Willis, who is Buck's nephew; this was never disclosed to Camille or Emma, who never suspected it because of Willis's race. Emma is delighted to learn that she and Willis are cousins, but shocked when medical records show that Camille, not Cora, is her biological mother, conceived from an affair she had with Cora's late husband when they all lived together. Cora had given a transfusion of blood to save Camille and afterward covered for Camille's illegitimate child.
Tucker interrogates Camille the following morning. She recounts how she staged Cookie's suicide to look like a murder for the sake of "family pride." Cora, who has ignored phone calls at her house, arrives at the station, and Camille expects she will corroborate her story, but Cora confidently insists that Cookie did not commit suicide, sticking resolutely to the story Camille concocted. Camille is charged with Cookie's murder. Half-delirious, she reenacts the Dance of the Seven Veils in her cell before throwing herself down on her bunk and sobbing in despair. Meanwhile, Willis and Emma go fishing with Boyle and Jack, before Emma excuses herself for another tryst with Jason.
