Evidence of Guilt by Jonnie Jacobs Page A

school together for a while."
    Grace looked up from her roast beef, confused. "You were a friend of his?"
    "Not a friend, really. We had a couple of classes together."
    She nodded, apparently relieved. "It would surprise me if anyone in that group of his amounted to much."
    "It certainly was rough there for a while," Jake said evenly, "but Wes has turned out just fine. Not everyone has to go to college or be a superstar."
    Andrea snickered. "Auto mechanic, my life's ambition."
    Grace gave her a stern look, then turned back to Jake. "That's not what I meant," she said pointedly.
    "Have you done much criminal work in the past?" Jake asked, directing his question my way.
    "Some, not a lot."
    "Kali knows her stuff," Sam said.
    Jake made some more inquiries, mostly about my education and training, then hit me with the big question I'd known was coming.
    "What's your assessment of the case? Are the odds as bad as they appear?"
    "It's kind of early to tell."
    "I'm not asking for promises, just your gut-level feeling."
    I shook my head. "Feelings don't bear on much of anything at this point."
    Grace cut a string bean in half, then set her fork down next to her plate. "Don't the police have quite a bit of evidence against Wes?"
    "There's no shortage of evidence the DA can use, but none of it's conclusive. We're hoping to chip away at most of it. We're also exploring other angles."
    Jake was refilling the wineglasses. He looked up. "What other angles?"
    "Nothing specific just yet. We thought we'd look into Lisa Cornell's background. She's relatively new to town. Also, there's a homeless man who lives in the woods near the Cornell place. It's possible he saw or heard something that could help us."
    Sam's head nodded in agreement. "Apparently there's been quite a bit of interest in the property Lisa Cornell inherited from her aunt. That's an avenue we'll pursue as well."
    Grace pushed the string bean around on her plate. "Don't you think the police have done that already?"
    "Not necessarily," Sam said. The police see what they want to see. Once they identify a suspect, they focus on that person to the exclusion of all others. They build a case against him based on their interpretation of the evidence."
    He paused to tear off a piece of roll, then held it in his hand while he continued. "But there are a lot of twists you can put on the facts. That's one of the approaches we take in trying to counter the prosecution's position. But the police also reach the wrong conclusion sometimes simply because of a missing piece they've overlooked. That's why we want to explore every possible angle."
    Jake appeared thoughtful. "I understand that Lisa Cornell was engaged. Don't statistics show that women are killed most often by a spouse or lover?"
    "What the statistics show," I explained, "is that most people are killed by someone they know. With women it's often someone they've been involved with romantically, but there can be other connections as well."
    "Don't you think it's worth exploring?" Jake's tone was patronizing, and I bit back the urge to tell him so.
    "I'm sure the police talked to the boyfriend," I said, "but I intend to also. If nothing else, he's likely to know about Lisa's recent activities. His name is Philip Stockman. His family owns the Big Bob Hardware stores."
    Pammy bobbed to attention. "You're kidding. His son goes to our school." She looked at Andrea. "Danny Stockman. He's a year behind you, I think. Do you know him?"
    "Great," Andrea huffed, her voice thick with sarcasm. "This gets better and better. As if it's not bad enough having a murderer in the family, now it turns out his victim is
    practically related to someone I went to school with. Thank God I graduated so I don't have to face all that when school starts."
    "Your brother has been charged," Jake said, emphasizing the last word, "not convicted. You watch what you say, understand?"
    Andrea lifted her chin and met his gaze. "Half-brother," she corrected.
    "Danny's