Disclaimer: None of it is mine (except Vanessa Mencken); all of it is Rob Thomas' (except Vanessa Mencken).

Anyone have any idea where I'm going with this?

X X X X X

So I approached it rationally.

I made lists in my head of why I should go to Mr. Rooks' hearing, and why I should go to see Lynn Echolls. (I was no fun at all at lunch that day. Wallace said he would've rather had lunch with a brick wall -- at least the brick wall wasn't supposed to actually, you know, be listening.)

Every reason I could think of favored Mr. Rooks. I liked him; my relationship with Logan was confusing but not at the level of like. (At least it definitely didn't seem to be hatred anymore.) The hearing was at a fixed time; the meeting with Lynn Echolls could be rescheduled. Carrie Bishop pissed me off; Lynn Echolls aroused my sympathies. (Vanessa Mencken pissed me off, too, but unlike Carrie she'd never done me any real dirt, she'd just been casually hurtful.) Mr. Rooks was one of the true good guys. Logan Echolls was -- or had been, until recently -- one of the bad guys.

Mr. Rooks had made Neptune High almost fun. Logan Echolls had made Neptune High almost hell.

I had convinced myself to call Logan and let him know that I was going to have to postpone talking to his mother when I realized that I was in my LeBaron and halfway to the Neptune Grand.

Instinct 1, reason 0. Mr. Rooks was on his own.

I called Logan to tell him, instead, that I was on my way. He told me to ask for "Mary Lester" when I got there and that I'd be escorted right up. Dad had stashed Lynn Echolls in the penthouse; you needed a special card to even make the elevator stop on that floor. Kept out any non-rich riffraff, except for those rare occasions, like now, when you wanted the riffraff to show up.

That's not saying Mrs. Echolls had that attitude. She'd always seemed nice enough.

The woman at the front desk -- Marissa by name -- asked me to confirm who I was , then motioned one of the bellhops to take over for her while she escorted me upstairs. "Really," I said. "I promise I won't steal the towels."

She gave me a look as though she suspected that that was exactly why I came there, escorted me to the front door of the Echolls' suite, and waited until Logan had let me in before she left.

"Charming woman," I said as Logan closed the door.

"Salt of the earth, that Marissa," Logan said. "Always looks and acts like she just found half a maggot in her steak." Then he got serious. "Here's the deal. Mom's in the next room and she knows you're coming. If she gets upset, the interview's over."

"You'll have to figure out she's upset from the next room." Before Logan could protest, I said, "I need her to answer honestly. I don't know if she'll answer honestly with you there."

Logan looked at me. "I suppose you'll turn around and walk out if I say no."

"More or less. Though I might go down the fire escape instead."

He sighed. "Or over the balcony." He knocked on the bedroom door. "Mom? Veronica's here."

I walked into the bedroom and closed the door behind me. Lynn Echolls was lying on her bed with the TV on (and switched, oddly, to Oprah.) When I walked in, she switched it off.

She looked --

Well, she looked like anyone would look who'd been holing up in a hotel room for the past few weeks. Made up and clean, but so pale you would have thought she was a cavefish. She smiled when she saw me. "Veronica," she said.

"Mrs. Echolls," I began. "Sorry to bother you—"

"Bother? You and your father got me away from those reporters. Nothing you do will ever bother me. And call me Lynn." She drank something from a glass – water, looked like.

"It's just that I'm going to be talking about some fairly uncomfortable subjects."

"You mean like how my husband stuck his penis into damn near anything that moved?" Lynn said.

I blinked. I hadn't been expecting that. "Um –"

"I've gotten used to the idea. Believe me. If he'd survived, I would have divorced him. Or killed myself. Whatever would have done him the most damage."

Okay, now I really needed to get my bearings. This conversation was going nowhere near like I'd thought. Logan's concern for his mother seemed to be, to say the least, misdirected.

"So you didn't know he was having all of those affairs?"

"Know? I knew he'd had a couple of affairs here and there over the years – he was a celebrity, not a priest. The last time I caught him – on the set of Road to Dead six years ago – he swore he'd never do it again. Of course, I was stupid and desperate enough to believe him." She took another drink of water. "I used to be an actress myself. You can look it up. But my last acting job was seven years ago, and that was just a cameo in one of Aaron's movies. Aaron told me I didn't have to work; that he'd take care of me. Having affairs with every woman who walked by isn't taking care of me."

Sounded to me like she'd been waiting to dump this for a long time. Hell, I may have been the first person she could have dumped it on. For various reasons, either no one else wanted to hear it, or they wanted to hear it on Entertainment Tonight. I'm betting she never saw any therapists, either. Aaron Echolls seemed domineering enough not to want her telling anyone else his secrets.

"Speaking of you catching him," I began, and gave her the details on Vanessa Mencken's claim. The only thing I left out was how the Echolls' poolhouse had become a do-it-yourself porn film set.

"I didn't catch them," Lynn said. "And if I had I wouldn't have stood around and watched."

I guessed she didn't mean she would have started beating on their backs with a pool cue. That wasn't her style.

"That's what this is about. This Mencken girl is threatening to go sell her story to the Enquirer or something and Logan's trying to protect me." She smiled. "Probably the only good thing he ever got from Aaron. That and his looks." Then she said, "She was right about one thing, though: I did come home from my trip a day early. I remember it was because the hotel I was staying at had double-booked the suite I was staying in – and since the other person was Duke somebody, I was the one who had to leave. When I got home Aaron wasn't in the house; he came in a few minutes later and told me he'd fallen asleep in the poolhouse."

We passed a bit more time in pleasantries and then I excused myself. Logan escorted me downstairs and I left to go back home. Along the way Wallace called me and told me that the school board had decided to let Mr. Rooks go.

Damn.

So here's what I had: No smoking gun from Lynn Echolls. With the tapes, I could probably get Vanessa to back off the story – let her go and sell her tale of the affair with Aaron Echolls if she wanted, or go to Hiram Dashiell for money – but that still didn't explain why she'd led me to the tapes if she knew they'd prove she was lying.

I mean, she could sell the tapes to Access Hollywood if she got her hands on them --

Of course.