Still in "Hot Dogs." We may be here a while.
Also: Thanks, thanks, once again to all the regular readers and reviewers.
Disclaimer: I did not create Veronica Mars. I didn't create that picture of Kristen Bell on the cover of Shape, either, but I like that, too.
Okay, so I'm male. Shoot me.
X X X X X
As you might imagine, the rest of the evening more or less provided the dictionary definition of the word "anticlimax."
The goose was delicious, I guess, but for all the attention we paid to it Lynn might as well have ordered KFC. We spent most of the discussion trying to figure out who might have a motive for shooting her.
Aaron Echolls fans headed the list; as did those women Aaron had had affairs with. Some of them might have been just obsessed enough to do something to Lynn if she badmouthed him.
Again, you ran into the "who knew" problem. Lynn didn't exactly broadcast her intentions. The only people who knew were me, Logan, Dad . . .
And Trina.
Well, hell, I wouldn't have put it past Trina once she found out about it to spread the word, though I can't imagine her encouraging people to kill her stepmother. "Is Trina around?" I asked.
Lynn said she wasn't; she was talking to a radio talk show about "her stepmother's wild allegations."
"When she gets back, could you have her call me?"
"Of course."
"Here's another question," I said. "Why are you still letting her stay here?"
"Because she's family," Lynn said. "She's free to spread her opinions about Aaron all she wants. I've got the evidence on my side." Plus, Lynn could actually act; I remembered the performance she'd put on at the press conference. Right before I'd gotten shot, she had the audience pretty much spellbound. She likely could have told them that Aaron Echolls had been involved in the plot to shoot JFK and they would have gone along with it.
All Trina had, by comparison, was earnestness and an absolute conviction that her father was a good man. It was no contest.
As for Logan's and my "alone time," it was a complete bust. Neither Logan nor I was especially interested in trying new sexual positions when there was a chance someone might be trying to kill one of our parents. We talked for a while and then he drove me home.
Dad looked at me as I came in. "You're home early."
"I have a good reason."
He looked concerned. "Did you and Logan have some kind of fight?"
"No." I'd debated with myself all the way home how much I wanted to tell Dad, then decided on "everything." I wasn't going to let him go wandering out there when there might be someone trying to kill him.
Besides, finding out that I could now effortlessly lie to him and get away with it didn't meant that that was something I wanted to do on a regular basis.
"I was thinking about the shooting," I said, and before Dad could interrupt I said, "Just thinking. Nothing's going to stop me from doing that." After a moment, Dad nodded. He understood. "So I asked Lynn to give me a copy of the announcement for her press conference last Tuesday.
I handed it to Dad and said, "See if you get out of it what I get out of it."
It took him less than twenty seconds. "There's way no one could have known you or Logan were going to be out there. Either Lynn or I was the target."
"A rifle is not an impulse weapon," I said. "So who have you pissed off recently? I mean, besides the Kane family, the Balboa County DA and Sheriff's Department?" Duncan wouldn't have done this; Deputy Leo was too nice a guy; and Clarence Weidman was right. He wouldn't have missed, no matter who he'd been shooting at.
"I'm a PI and former Sheriff. I think the list of people I haven't pissed off is shorter than the other one." Then his face got serious. "And you're not to talk to any of them."
I held out my right hand. "Whoa, Dad. No plans," I lied. "It came up purely by accident. But like I said. I'm not going to stop thinking about who might be trying to kill people I care about."
"You care about Lynn Echolls?"
"She's a good person," I said. "She's helped me, helped you, and she's my boyfriend's mother. I can't call her my best friend, but yeah, I do."
Dad smiled. "She's made your list, isn't she?"
"My list?"
"You may not notice it, but you have a list of people you care about. People who you absolutely will not anyone else mess with. At the beginning of the year that list was down to one. Me. And now look at it: Logan, Duncan, Meg, Mac, Wallace, Weevil – although that one still concerns me a bit – and now Lynn." He shook his head. "What happened to you over that year, sweetie – I know it was an emotional hell. I worried for a while that you'd never be able to let anyone in again."
"You can thank Wallace and Meg for most of that," I said. Damn, how different would life have been if I'd told Wallace to take off way back in September after he sat down in my table?
I didn't want to think about it.
"So the thing is, honey, I understand why you want to think about who might want to hurt her. Or me. Just make sure that's all you do."
I nodded and went into my room.
X X X X X
The next morning, Mac drove me in.
"So," she said. "Meg as your assistant. How's that working out?"
"So far, very well," I said. "How's Logan's quest to find something to beat you at?"
"We didn't exactly have a whole time to play over the last week, what with you being shot and all," Mac said sardonically.
"I'm sorry to have interrupted your tournament," I said.
"Well, duck next time, okay?"
"I'll try."
"You'd better. It'd be a lot less interesting around here without you."
"Not really big on the emotional moments, are you?" I asked.
She laughed. "Would you feel better if I gave you a big bear hug?"
"Not while you're driving the car, it wouldn't."
When we got to Neptune, Mac helped me out of the Beetle and we walked in. A bit in front of me, Meg and Mandy were talking – about her dog, I guessed. Right when I caught up Mandy got a phone call. Taking out her phone, she said, "Hello?" Then, in a crescendo of excitement, "Yes I did. Oh, you have?"
Her face plummeted and she hung up. "What happened?" I asked.
"Nothing," she said sadly. "Someone was just playing a stupid trick." We all looked down the hall to a group of boys laughing, including one waving his cell and barking. Mandy explained that it was Lenny Sofer, who she'd had a crush on but that not only was the crush not returned that once he'd found out he'd been as big a jackass as possible to her.
I moved to walk down the hall and Meg stopped me. Eyes narrowed, she said, "My case, Ronniekins. But you three follow me." She marched down the hall directly no Lenny and his group, with Mac, Mandy and me following.
"Meg, don't," Mandy said. "Really, it's not worth it."
"Don't say that," Meg said. "Of course it is." She went up to Lenny. "Hi, Lenny! Were you the one who just made that phone call to Mandy?"
"What if I did?" Lenny said, sneering.
"Don't do it again," Meg said.
"Or what?"
"Look behind me, Lenny." She gestured at me and Mac. "You may recognize my friends. One of them is Mac MacKenzie. What she doesn't know about computers isn't worth knowing. The other is Veronica Mars." Apparently I needed no further description. "I anchor the Neptune High News. My boyfriend edits the Navigator."
"So?" Lenny said with obviously false bravado.
"So," Meg said cheerfully, "We really don't like it when jackasses like you make fun of innocents like Mandy. Now, think about what we –" her gesture encompassed Mac and I again – "have managed to accomplish this year." She gave Lenny a second to think, which was clearly hard work for him. "Now, then," she said, her voice never losing its perky tenor, "There's a question you might want to ask yourself. Do you really want to piss us off?" She leaned in closer.
"Think carefully, Lenny," I said. "This will count for 100 of your final grade."
His crowd of friends by now had gone completely silent. "Um . . . no?"
Meg smiled. "Very good, Lenny. By the way – that applies to all of you."
Everyone nodded and walked away, shooting nervous glances behind them as they left. When they rounded a corner. Meg turned, jumped about a foot in the air, and let out a squeal of delight. "Yes!" she said. Mac grinned and I started laughing. "Now do you think it was worth it?" she asked Mandy.
It took a moment, but finally Mandy said, "Yeah. Yeah it was."
Meg put her arm around Mandy's shoulder. "Good. Now we'll get back to work on looking for Chester today after school, okay?" Mandy walked off and Meg looked at us. "I hope you don't mind –"
"Mind?" Mac said. "I like it when people are scared of me." She rubbed her hands evilly.
"And they're already terrified of me, so no problem there," I said. "For what it's worth, I might have urged Mandy to take care of something like that herself next time, but otherwise, flawless."
Meg looked at me and shook her head. "No, Veronica. There are people who need to be protected and those who do the protecting. I'm going to be one of the ones who does the protecting." Her voice grew bleak at the end of her statement. Then it was like it had never happened. "Anyway," she said merrily, "I checked around and there are an awful lot of lost dog posters going up. There's definitely something going on."
"Did you call them?"
"What?"
She hadn't thought of that. "Call them. You said yesterday that the two '09er dogs had been returned. My advice is when you check today you check the reward money on those notices you saw and see if there's a correlation between amount of reward and dog returned."
Meg didn't waste much time on self-recrimination. "Good idea. Sorry I didn't think of it myself." Then, "If there is, do you think there's some kind of dognapping ring going around?"
"Probably," I said. "We'll worry about that when it happens."
Meg nodded and walked off to class.
X X X X X
The only significant thing to happen for the rest of the school day was that I got a call from Cliff. The teacher frowned at me until I mentioned that it had something to do with my shooting. She shut up after that. "Mr. Holtz called me back," he said. "Apparently the Casablancas boy pissed and moaned about your second condition, but in the end he gave in." I told him that that was good news. "It is," Cliff said. "But Veronica, do me a favor? The next time you're going to pull something like that, try and give me some advance warning? I almost had a heart attack when you started giving him conditions."
"Couldn't've proved it by the way you acted."
"It's one of my strengths as a lawyer: a poker face Phil Hellmuth would kill for. But assuming you and your father don't actually want me keeling over – never a safe assumption with your family – try not to do that again, okay? Anyway, we have a meeting set up for Thursday after school unless that's horrible inconvenient." It wasn't. "Good. Always a pleasure."
Logan drove me home – we hadn't had much of a chance to connect that day, unfortunately.
When we got home, it was a different matter entirely.
Once again, you're not getting the details. Let's just say that my injured shoulder was never once an issue . . . but that we both had a lot of fun anyway.
After we were done – dressed, cleaned up, all of it, so that Dad wouldn't have anything to pin his suspicions on – I mentioned my dream and the conviction that the phrase "she came back wrong" meant something.
Logan said, "Are you sure? I had a dream last night where I turned into Sylvester Stallone. I don't think that means I want to have the crap kicked out of me by Apollo Creed, though."
"We're not getting into your secret masochistic fantasies right now," I said, while he rolled his eyes. "And yes, I'm sure. Maybe if we bounce some ideas off each other –"
"Instead of what we've been bouncing off each other so far this afternoon?"
"Yes."
He said, "You're no fun."
"I think the moaning you were doing about twenty minutes ago would argue differently. Now, are you in?"
"I'm in."
"Then let's get to work."