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the walls. "It's a big job. You're smart to tackle it a room at a time."
    Smart had nothing to do with it. I was tackling it the only way I could. Renovation didn't come cheaply.
    The house had suffered from neglect since my mother's death. At first my father had wanted to leave everything just the way it was, although he had, begrudgingly, agreed to a new roof when the old one leaked so badly the upstairs rooms became unusable. Then, as he lost himself increasingly in his drinking, he'd ceased to care.
    I'd intended originally to sell the place, as is. Sabrina concurred, and our brother John, who'd been living in Italy for the past five years, didn't care what we did so long as it didn't involve him. But when my one-week trip home to settle the estate had grown to a month, and then two months, I had reconsidered.
    My coveted, on-the-brink-of-partnership position in San Francisco had turned to dust, as had my relationship with the firm's star litigator. There wasn't a lot to go back to but a mortgage I could no longer afford. I'd leased my house in Berkeley, furnished, and taken refuge in the family home I'd been so eager to leave fourteen years earlier.
    The white was a good choice," Benson observed. "It lightens the room considerably. Sticking to something basic like that probably makes things less complicated as well."
    I smiled. The color was royal ivory, not white, and it had taken me ten tries to get it right.
    "I wanted to talk to you about Lisa Cornell's death," I said, getting back to the purpose of my earlier call.
    Benson raised his beer and took a swallow. His bald
    head shone like polished stone. "I thought it might be something like that." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "What's your interest in this anyway?"
    "Co-counsel with Sam Morrison. That is, assuming it's okay with our client."
    "Hell, Wes won't care. He seems to have taken the ostrich approach to this whole business, like it doesn't really concern him. You'd think a man facing a possible death sentence would show a little interest in the outcome."
    "How strong is the case against him?"
    Benson gave a hollow laugh. "That's a question better put to the prosecutor. But you want my opinion, it's strong enough that I wouldn't want to be standing in your shoes."
    Not a heartening appraisal, but then Daryl Benson wasn't a neutral party.
    "I was looking through the case file before you arrived," I said, trying to keep my tone friendly rather than lawyer-like. "From what I've been able to gather the evidence is all circumstantial. And there's no motive, no murder weapon, no witnesses."
    He brushed the air with his hand. "Don't need them."
    "Did your investigation turn up other possible suspects?"
    His eyes met mine, kindly. "The evidence may be circumstantial, Kali, but it all points to Wes Harding."
    I opened my mouth to argue, but Benson held up his hand. "First off, we've got that rabbit's foot. A guy at the auto shop where Wes works remembers seeing him with it Thursday afternoon. When we questioned Wes on Tuesday he couldn't produce it. 'Might have lost it,' he says. You ask me, it's mighty peculiar he happened to lose it right when he did."
    "A rabbit's foot is hardly a one-of-a-kind item."
    "This one's pretty close. It's black rather than the stan-
    dard white, and it's attached to a braided leather strand. But that's not the only thing that points to Wes. Tread marks in the dirt at the end of Lisa Cornell's driveway match Harding's motorcycle, at least as far as we can tell. It's not a perfect print, but the soil was damp so it's more than we might have gotten otherwise. And we found a long blond hair on clothing in Harding's hamper."
    "With enough root structure for DNA testing?"
    He shook his head. "But the color, length and texture are the same as Lisa's. She used some kind of dye that also showed up on the strand we found with Harding's clothes. May not be exact science, but I'm willing to bet a jury would find it pretty convincing."
    I