LAS VEGAS — Testimony in Margaret Rudin's nine-week-old trial wrapped Tuesday afternoon with lawyers battling to the final witness over whether circumstantial evidence implicates the so-called Black Widow in the murder of her millionaire fifth husband.

The jury will hear closing arguments Wednesday and will begin deliberating charges Thursday that could send the 57-year-old socialite to prison for life.

Rudin is accused of shooting her philandering real estate developer husband, Ron, in 1994 to get at his $11 million fortune. She maintains her innocence and claims his shady business associates are to blame.

Rudin, who is so optimistic about her acquittal that she has already planned a victory party, wore a broad smile throughout the day, perhaps in part because her daughter, Kristina Mason, was in the court for the first time.

Rudin has had scant support in the gallery during the trial since many of her friends were on the witness list. But the former socialite beamed as her daughter mouthed, "See you later, love you" on her way out of court.

"Of course, I wanted to be here from the beginning, but circumstances didn't permit it," said Mason, a daughter from Rudin's first marriage. She said her mother wanted to shield her from the unsavory parts of the case, but added, "I'm here for the most important part — the end."

The finale she saw was a strong finish for the defense with a blood stain expert — the fourth of the trial — telling jurors the prosecution's murder theory was impossible and an antiques dealer and his assistant testifying that an important witness against Rudin lied on the stand.

That witness, Bruce Honabach, testified the first week of the trial that he sold Rudin a humpback trunk which authorities claim she used to take her husband's dismembered body to a remote desert dump spot after she had shot him repeatedly in the head as he slept in their home.

Honabach claimed he bought the trunk from a dealer named Donald Schaupeter shortly before selling it to Rudin. But Tuesday, Schaupeter told jurors that he knew nothing of such a sale and had told Honabach and a prosecution investigator just that weeks ago.

Because the prosecution did not notify the defense of Schaupeter's account, Judge Joseph Bonaventure allowed the defense to reopen their case and call Schaupeter and his assistant Trudy Vadovsky. The judge, however, denied a defense motion to dismiss the charges completely.

Schaupeter, a motel owner who sells vintage costume jewelry on Ebay and took the stand sporting a gray ponytail, sunglasses and a fist-size aquamarine pendant, said he had done about a hundred different antique sales with Honabach, and while one sale was a small case for roller skates, none of the lots included a humpback trunk.

Schaupeter knew nothing of the trial until March 27 when Ray Stefans, a prosecution investigator questioned him. He said he told Stefans "five or six times" that Honabach was wrong and even spoke to Honabach to "straighten everything out." Honabach, he said, was "overly sweet" to him during the conversation, but continued to insist the skates case was the same as the wooden trunk.

"I said, 'Bruce, that little case is too small to put a cadaver in,'" he recalled.

He said that despite his reluctance to testify — he suffers from emphysema and has trouble walking — he had called the defense and offered to come forward because his conscience was bothering him.

"I couldn't live with something like that, I didn't know the trunk was that important," he said.

On cross-examination, prosecutor Gary Guymon suggested Schaupeter was lying about what he told Honabach and Stefans. The truth, Guymon said, was that Schaupeter could not say for sure whether the trunk was one of the many items he sold through Honabach.

Schaupeter, however, was firm, telling Guymon, "I never had a trunk. How many times do I have to tell you."

Vadovsky, who listened to some of Schaupeter's conversations with Stefans and Honabach, vouched for his story and added, "I've been in every storage unit that he has and I know almost everything he has, and there has never been a trunk."

The prosecution called Stefans to rebut Schaupeter's story, but the investigator hardly helped the state's cause. He claimed Schaupeter "said it was possible there was a trunk in [a 1994] sale," but admitted he never taped his interviews with the witness or filed a formal report.

He also conceded that the only notes he had on Schaupeter were hastily written after he found out the man was in contact with the defense and weeks after his actual interviews.

The investigator drew groans from the defense when he acknowledged that he had tried and failed to tape a phone conversation with Schaupeter Monday night, a conversation in which the dealer insisted he had never sold the trunk. The tape recorder broke, Stefans said.

"I think you're old enough to remember Watergate and the missing 18 minutes of tape," defense attorney Tom Pitaro chided.

The prosecution hoped to put Honabach back on the stand to answer Schaupeter's charges, but the judge denied their motion and Honabach, who was sitting in the hall outside court, was sent home.

The defense also scored points with the testimony of crime scene reconstructionist Thomas Streed, who attacked the prosecution's theory that Rudin shot her husband as he slept in their bedroom.

Streed said state blood stain experts who concluded specks of blood found on the walls of the room were consistent with gunshot spatter had overstated the evidence. The stains, which when put together would constitute about one drop of blood, could have come from a nose bleed, a cut finger or a number of other possibilities, Streed claimed. Ron Rudin, according to one witness, suffered from heavy nose bleeds.

"I found nothing in that bedroom that was consistent with an individual being shot in the head three times," he said, adding more bluntly, "Ron Rudin was not shot in that bedroom."

Prosecutor Chris Owens tried to undermine Streed's credentials. He pointed out the witness's chief expertise lay in the areas of police shootings and drug use, not blood stain analysis. Streed acknowledged this, but refused to back off his findings.

After Streed was dismissed, both sides formally rested and Bonaventure, who has griped about the trial's slow pace, seemed pleased as he told jurors that after 95 witnesses and over 500 pieces of evidence, the trial was drawing to a close.

"I think everybody's rested," he said. "There will be no more testimony in this case.

Some jurors greeted this news with a smile.