BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — A security guard who testified she saw Winona Ryder cutting security tags from clothing in a Beverly Hills department store last December denied Thursday under cross-examination that she massaged her story on the stand.

"Didn't you think that the most damning things about my client that day were that you looked through the slats [of the dressing room] and saw her cutting off security tags and that her director asked her to do it for a movie?" Ryder's attorney, Mark Geragos, asked former security guard Colleen Rainey, while pointing to a report she made of the incident.

In the report, Rainey made no mention of those two facts, although she testified about them at length on Wednesday. A supplementary report that Rainey supplied to the Beverly Hills police department on Dec. 13, 2001, the day after the alleged shoplifting spree, was the first to mention them.

"I don't have an answer for that," replied Rainey.

Prosecutors say Ryder, 31, stole $5,560.40 of merchandise from the department store by taking clothes into dressing rooms, cutting off the security tags and then concealing the tags in the store. She is charged with grand larceny, burglary, and vandalism. The charges carry a maximum penalty of three years in prison, but Ryder is likely to receive probation if convicted.

Rainey, who worked for the upscale Saks Fifth Avenue store for eight months as a loss prevention associate, also denied trying to make a profit off Ryder's arrest.

Geragos, who claims his client is a victim of overzealous security guards, produced banking records showing that an account Rainey opened with her now husband, a struggling screenwriter, had received $50,000 in deposits in the months after Ryder was formally charged, implying she had sold her story.

He also showed jurors a document in which Rainey formed a company for business and writing services.

But Rainey explained that her husband was a financial consultant, that she started the company on his behalf, and that the money was payment he received from an employer. She also referred to her student loans and her 1991 Toyota Supra as proof of her enduring poverty.

Prosecutor Ann Rundle said she wanted to clear the air, asking Rainey, "How much money have you made as a result of the arrest of Winona Ryder on Dec. 12, 2001?"

"Zero," said Rainey.

Rundle then made an indirect jab at Geragos, a talk show fixture, by asking Rainey if she had ever appeared on any of the tabloid television shows or "Larry King Live" to discuss the case. 

Rainey demurred, drawing laughs from the gallery.

On Wednesday, Rainey described observing Ryder in the dressing room, then following her up to the third floor where prosecutors say she ditched a number of the security tags. Rainey said she then tailed Ryder to the first floor, where she and two other agents apprehended her outside the store.

They took Ryder to the basement and made an inventory of the items she allegedly stole while waiting for police to arrive.

Geragos pressed Rainey on her behavior in the security room, asking her whether she ever threw Chapstick at the actress, called Ryder a "bitch" or rifled through Ryder's Filofax, paying special attention to phone numbers she identified as belonging to Keanu Reeves and Bono.

Rainey denied doing anything untoward in the security room.

Geragos has alleged that while Ryder was in the basement, security guards lifted her shirt, but Ernest Amaya, a guard who still works with Saks, testified Thursday that it was actually Ryder who lifted her shirt to her waistband as if to prove she had no more stolen items.

A detective with the Beverly Hills police department further described Ryder's behavior in the security room, saying she was very talkative. "She was explaining she had been getting into character for a role. She said she was getting ready to play a kleptomaniac," said Mark Parker. "She wanted to see how it felt to shoplift."

During a hearing Thursday, Fox denied a request by the Los Angeles Times to unseal pretrial discussions about any previous arrests that Ryder may have had.

The prosecution rested its four-day case after calling six witnesses. The defense will call its first witness Friday afternoon.