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Daddy finally found something they could agree on, that Steve Janson is a complete jerk.
    "Now Ted's doing his wet dream of a murder case, on TV every day, a million dollar book deal waiting in the wings, and I'm practically disbarred, living in some crummy apartment in Studio City, and it's still not enough for him! Hamilton still wakes up every day asking himself, 'Is this the day I'll get to put Steve Janson in prison?' So, you want to know why I'm a little on edge whenever anyone mentions Ted Hamilton to me?" Steve took a bite of a fat pickle as if it were Hamilton's neck.
    "You're telling me you're not working for Greg Markham?"
    Steve gave Cynthia a sharp glance and she dipped her chin as if slapped. "Sorry."
    "Do you like being a reporter?" he asked her a moment later in a transparent attempt to re-start the conversation.
    "It has its moments. I like it more than prosecuting coked-up car thieves. And the pay is a lot better."
    "It hardly seems like there's enough going on in the Travis case to keep you busy full time. What else are you doing?"
    Cynthia fiddled with her sandwich, adding brown mustard in precise dabs. "It's like an assembly line, cops are investigating one case, the defendant's just been arrested in a second, the third one is about to go to trial, you know the drill."
    "And Tom Travis is just a hop, skip, and a jump from a verdict."
    "Until the judge got sick. How is he, by the way?"
    "Daddy and I aren't close. You might say I'm off the mailing list for the family newsletter."
    "You said he blamed you for Lynn's death. I would have thought that once he calmed down he would have realized that it wasn't your fault."
    Steve nervously rubbed his nose and turned away. "That's just his cover story," he began, as if talking to himself. "Daddy was never happy about Lynn and me. Ted Hamilton went to Stanford. I went to City College. Ted graduated from Boalt Hall Law School. I took night classes at the UCLA extension. Ted's father was an executive Vice President for Excell Development Corporation. My dad was a carpenter. You see where this is going?"
    "The Judge didn't think you were good enough for Lynn."
    "He thought Lynn had committed the disgraceful sin of letting a mongrel into the thoroughbred's pasture. Deep in his heart I suspect he thinks her murder was just karma, life punishing her for having the bad taste to marry below her class." Steve took a swallow of tea and banged down his glass. "There was one Christmas . . . ." Scowling, he paused in mid-sentence and gave his head a little shake. "Never mind. That's all in the past now. How about you? Any new romance in your life these days?"
    "No romance at all."
    "What about, who was it, Larry Baldwin, the litigator from Crowell and Jones?"
    Cynthia grimaced. "That was ages ago. I saw him a couple of months ago," she said, and suddenly grinned.
    "What?"
    "Oh, just thinking, one of those 'what if' things. I barely recognized him. He looked like he weighed three hundred pounds. His head was puffed up so much I thought it was going to explode."
    "Dodged a bullet on that one."
    "You bet. How about you? You seeing anyone?"
    Now it was Steve's turn to frown. "Too many ghosts."
    Cynthia hurried to change the subject.
    "So, off the record, what do you think about the Travis case?"
    "He's a prick, excuse my French, and he probably did it, but the evidence is pretty thin."
    "If he didn't kill her, who did? Surely you don't buy Greg's serial killer/Satanic Cult theory?" Cynthia cut the second half of her sandwich into three precise, ladylike sections.
    "I must have missed the day in law school where they covered the doctrine of Guilty By The Process Of Elimination. How does that work? "Once you have eliminated all other logical motives for a crime, the sole remaining person with a strong motive is presumed guilty"?
    "You have to admit that the girl friend's testimony is pretty compelling."
    "I've heard the sound bites on the news, but all they tell me is what I already