And now for the big revelation. I've been planting clues for a while now. But remember, this is Veronica Mars' universe. Never make assumptions.

Disclaimer: I own none of the characters or settings in this stories except the original ones.

Spike: "Don't you get it? Don't you see? You came back wrong."

-- Buffy the Vampire Slayer, episode "Smashed"

X X X X X

Vanessa took my arm off. "And if I don't want to talk to you?"

"I kind of think you do," I said. "Shall we go into my office or would you rather me accuse of you things out here in the hall where everyone can hear me?"

"Accuse me of what?"

"Step into my office and I'll tell you," I said. "Assuming you don't know already."

Vanessa rolled her eyes, said, "Whatever," and walked with me to the ladies' room. I put up the out of order sign before I walked in.

Leaning against the counter with a bored expression on her face, she said, "Whatever it is you think I did, just let me know flat out so I can either confess or tell you to go to hell."

"Are you sure you want me to do that?"

"Didn't I just tell you to?"

"Okay," I said. "Flat out you want, flat out you'll get. I think you shot me and you've been trying to kill Lynn Echolls."

She blinked and said, "You're out of your mind."

"That's one alternative," I said brightly. "The other is that you're an attempted murderer."

"Why the hell would you think that?"

"Let's see. Where should I begin? First, you threatened Lynn Echolls' life. Publicly. Online. Yeah, the moderators of that particular forum deleted it, but a threat's a threat. Second. You've got reason to be pissed off at Lynn Echolls -- though I wouldn't have thought you were such a big fan of Aaron, seeing how quickly you were willing to pimp out those videotapes for some spare cash --"

"Aaron was a great man," Vanessa said. "Too much for one woman to be able to satisfy." She looked at me sourly. "Anyway, I didn't want to sell those videotapes but you kind of left me no other choice. I was trying to blackmail Logan by threatening to expose his mother."

"Which still would have made Aaron look bad."

"He already looked bad," Vanessa said. "There were women coming out almost every day with new stories about their secret love affairs with Aaron Echolls. All I would have done was made Lynn look bad too."

"Still didn't notice much hesitation about actually selling the tapes," I said.

"Like I said, he already looked bad. The tapes added exactly nothing to the conversation and $100,000 to my personal bank account."

"You're lucky you didn't do it while Aaron was alive. He'd've killed you."

"And I'd have deserved it if he had," she said.

She did not just say that. "So, you're saying," I said, "It's not so much that Aaron Echolls didn't kill my best friend, but that my best friend got what was coming to her." I shook my head. "What is it about this bastard?"

"Disappointed you didn't get a taste?" Vanessa said acidly.

"I'd sooner taste cyanide," I snapped back.

"So I know you don't think I shot you based on just that," Vanessa said.

"I think a publicly stated death threat is a pretty good start," I said.

Vanessa sighed exaggeratedly. "Veronica, I was one of maybe two dozen people just on that forum who did that," she said. "What makes you think it was me?"

"Because the only other person who would have had time is an 85-year old woman who can't drive and is functionally blind without her glasses," I said. "I don't care how pissed off AechollsFan29 in New Jersey is -- there's no way he would have had the time to round up a killer in Neptune. And this would be the case even if Aechollsfan29 was Tony Soprano." In any event, that there was any kind of professional assassin involved seemed so unlikely as to be almost impossible. A professional might miss once; they weren't going to miss three times. Not unless we were dealing with the most incompetent assassin on the planet.

"Any district attorney in the country would laugh at you," Vanessa said. "Hello? My parents are mystery writers and they've shoved every book they've ever written down my throat. I have some vague knowledge of how the legal system works."

"Then you've heard of motive, means, opportunity," I said. "So far I've got you nailed on the first one –" she didn't argue that particular point – and I think I've got you on opportunity. It's means I'm a little shaky on, but I'm guessing someone with boatloads of money isn't going to be having problems rustling up a couple of .22s on command."

"If I knew anything about guns, no," she said.

"I thought you said your parents were mystery writers and that made you an expert," I said innocently.

"I've also read about forensics; that doesn't make me Gil Grissom." Vanessa looked at me. "Anyway, opportunity?"

"You were, conveniently, off yesterday. At first I thought it was just an attack of senioritis but then Lynn got shot while she was shopping for clothes."

"Huh. Is that what she was doing? They didn't say that on the news, but it figures. Someone like that—"

I shook my head. "That's not really important. What is important is that you had plenty of time yesterday to follow her around and wait for the right opportunity. Right as she was coming out of a store would have been perfect."

"You're out of your mind, Veronica," she said. "I didn't follow her around yesterday."

I caught it immediately. "Not yesterday? So when did you follow her around?" She didn't answer. I said, "You spraypainted her windshield and left that nasty note inside her car."

"Okay, fine. I did that. You've caught my evil plan. Put the handcuffs on, officer, and send me away for vandalism. Wow. A whole $500 fine. Ow. Veronica, this slap on the wrist hurts."

"Snide is not a tool for the inexperienced, Vanessa. Now you've admitted to threatening her twice."

"I called her a bitch and told her to quit lying about Aaron," she said.

"I'm fairly sure there's a strong 'or else' implied in 'Stop lying about Aaron Echolls, bitch.'"

"I was just blowing smoke," she said. "Anyway, this was way back when everyone thought Dick Junior was the one who'd tried to kill you."

"Yeah, funny how the second attempt came after the fact that he wasn't became public knowledge."

"And yet," she said, "There I was, vandalizing her car. Smart of me to call attention to myself like that, wasn't it? You know, being an attempted murderer and all."

Sometimes, just when you think you're on that stretch run towards figuring out what happened, your horse decides to jump the rail and go running off in another direction.

Because, dammit, she had a good point.

"So, if you weren't stalking Lynn Echolls, where were you?"

She reached into her purse. I tensed up for a second and instinctively reached for my taser, then relaxed when what she pulled out was a pill bottle of some sort. As I put my taser away, she tossed it over to me.

It was a prescription for Nexium.

"Do you know where I was yesterday?" she said. "I've been having chest pains – and yes, I'm eighteen, but I know chest pains aren't something you mess around with. Especially not when three of my grandparents died of heart attacks in their early '50s. When I could barely get to sleep at all the night before last I went and checked myself into the emergency room. This would have been about ten o'clock. By the time they ran every test under the sun they finally determined that no, I was not in fact having a heart attack, that what I had was GERD. So they wrote me out a prescription for the Nexium and that was that." I looked at the bottle; the prescription had indeed been filled yesterday. "On the off chance you care, my chest feels a lot better today."

"I'm glad for you," I muttered, handing her back the bottle. Even when you were rich, getting run through an emergency room for chest pains couldn't have been a quick experience – and it was very, very easy to check up on.

"So," she said, "Are you convinced now that I didn't try to kill Lynn Echolls?"

"Yes," I said, sighing. "But I still don't like you."

As she breezed past me to the ladies' room door, she said, "Mutual feeling, Veronica Mars," and left me alone with my thoughts.

And now I was officially out of suspects. I had a whole lot of facts – and one half-remembered phrase distorted through the prism of the Buffyverse. "She came back wrong." Still, every way I'd tried of putting them together so far had failed.

There had to be something I was missing. But what?

X X X X X

The rest of the school day was kind of a blur after that. Nothing like having your dramatic reveal thrown back in your face to kill the mood.

After school, Logan took me over to his house. When we got there, Trina and Lynn were on their way out the door.

"Mother," Logan said disapprovingly.

"Logan, Logan," Trina said. "Relax, silly. I'm going to take her shopping for bodyguards."

"How exactly does one shop for bodyguards?" I asked. "I mean, do they have them laid out like produce? Three armed guards for a dollar, musclebound types fifty cents a pound?"

"There are a couple of agencies here in town. Veronica, when your father called me the other night he persuaded me to go this route if I insisted on leaving the estate. I asked him, but he said he's not really a bodyguard type."

Trina said, " Right. Look how well he did for Dad." I glared at her, which in typical Trina fashion she completely ignored.

"And no, Logan," Lynn went on, "These people your father recommended are more than cannon fodder. They check routes, they keep places secure, and so on. They're there for more than just throwing themselves in front of bullets."

"And what are you getting out of this?"

"The knowledge that my stepmother is safe and secure."

"And . . .?" Logan asked pointedly.

Trina sighed, "Okay, I told my agent about it. I thought it might make me look good. Lynn and I disagreeing about something yet I'm still willing to help protect her life."

"That's what I thought," Logan said.

"Be quiet, Logan," Lynn said. "She's still taking me. No matter what her motives are she's still doing it."

After a couple of seconds, Logan said, "Be careful."

"Don't worry," Trina said. "No one else is going to try to shoot Lynn. I promise you that."

"No one had better," Logan said, and Trina and Lynn left.

Logan turned to me, "Well, that was a bit of a buzzkill."

"Not in the mood?"

"Not at the moment," he said. "Since we're here . . ."

"I don't think I've seen the entire house," I said. "Maybe you could give me the grand tour? Maybe something in there will . . . inspire you."

"You really think seeing my Mom's private bathroom will turn me on? You're sick, Mars."

"Okay, maybe something will inspire me."

"That worries me even more."

I laughed. "Shut up and give me the tour."

It was fairly routine until we came to a room I'd never been into before. "This is the family trophy room," he said. "Which makes it mostly my father's trophy room." He opened the door.

There was a fake fireplace with Aaron Echolls' two Academy Awards, three Golden Globes, and an Emmy.

"When did your father win an Emmy?" I asked.

"Guest shot on Wings."

There were a couple of things for Logan and Trina, and nothing whatsoever for Lynn. This was basically a monument to the greatness that was Aaron Echolls.

The highlight of the room, though, was clearly the deer heads mounted on the wall, a couple of other animals, and some photographs on the walls beneath the deer of proud hunters holding up their kills.

I asked, "You responsible for any of these? I remember you mentioning those father-son hunting trips your dad and Big and Little Dick Casablancas went on."

"No, I tended not to like to go on those things," Logan said. "Not that I'm a vegetarian, but the concept of personally making something suffer so I can be heap big macho man and stick a rack of antlers on my wall never appealed. Just another way to disappoint my father, I guess."

"Hmmm." As I looked around the room, I looked at the heads on the wall and the stuffed and mounted mountain lion, frozen forever in a snarling leap. Ten would get you a hundred that Aaron had shot the thing while it was running away. It suited him, shooting something in the back.

I also glanced at the photographs of the proud hunters holding up their trophies. I looked a little more closely at one of the pictures.

My mouth went dry.

"Logan," I said. "I know who's trying to kill your mother."

"Who?"

"I can't believe I didn't figure this out earlier." Logan came over and looked at the picture I was looking at. "No," he said.

"It has to be. Think about it. And -- and there's --"

"There's what?" Logan asked.

"After I was shot. Everyone came into the house -- you, Lynn, Dad, even Clarence Weidman. And then Trina, who had been sulking inside, came up to see what had happened."

"Then she ran out to find a doctor. I remember. What's your point?"

"Trina was out of breath," I said. "Out of breath from where, three rooms away? Don't you get it? Don't you see? She came back wrong."