Moment of truth

Don McKay (Thomas Haden Church) is a lonely High School janitor who one day receives a letter from his High School sweetheart, Sonny (Elizabeth Shue). In it, she asks him to come visit her back in their home town, because she is dying of a mysterious disease. At first he is reluctant because he had been a suspect in a murder case there years before, but Don decides to go. He arrives and gets a ride to Sonny's house by an eccentric cab driver named Samuel (M. Emmet Walsh). Don meets Sonny, as well as her strange care giver Marie (Melissa Leo). Marie's coldness towards Don makes it clear that she doesn't approve of his presence. Don spends the night, and he and Sonny make love. The next morning, Sonny's Doctor, Lance Pryce (James Rebhorn) visits. He too gives an unwelcoming vibe to Don. The following day, while Marie and Sonny are out, Pryce attacks Don in the house. After a struggle, Don kills the man, and throws his body in a bed of leaves behind the garden. Don sees his old friend Otis (Keith David), and tells him what happened. Otis agrees to help Don get rid of the body that night, but when he arrives it has vanished. Sonny rushes out, thinking the men are burglars, and Otis runs off. After an argument, Don returns home for a few days, eventually getting another letter from Sonny asking him to come back to her. He does. Samuel picks Don up again, but they are intercepted and kidnapped by a man named Mel (Pruitt Taylor Vince). Mel takes Don to a hotel room, where it's revealed that both Mel and Marie were planning all along to kill Don and take an inheritance Don would receive upon Don's marriage. With Samuel in Mel's trunk, the four drive back to Sonny's house, and demand that Don go in wearing a wire, presumably so they know that he killed Sonny. Sonny quickly peels away Don's story, and Mel and Marie go into the house. After a long confrontation, Sonny hits Marie over the head with a frozen ham, and kills her. She tells Don to kill Mel, and Don refuses. Sonny kills Mel, and tries to concoct a story to cover all of it. She tells Don that she'd been planning all along to take a large inheritance from Pryce, not Don, that he had received from a relative. It's also revealed that Pryce was her husband, and that the two were going to kill him together, but Pryce jumped the gun on the scam. Don then tells her that he knows that she wasn't actually Sonny, as he had killed his girlfriend before leaving town years ago, but gotten away with it. In the ensuing investigation, Samuel backs up Don's story, and it seems that he will be okay. The detective in charge asks him why he would go through all of it if he knew that it wasn't Sonny, and Don answers that he was "lonely". Wikipedia ---