Author's Note: The penultimate chapter of The Answer. I think you'll like what I do in the final part.

Disclaimer: Rob Thomas owns Veronica Mars. I created this particular iteration.

X X X X X

"Veronica!" Duncan shouted. "What are you doing in Lilly's room?"

Logan pulled me to my feet and said, "Are you okay?"

"Peachy keen," I said. "And what I'm doing in Lilly's room, Duncan -- the vent is where Lilly always used to hide things. I wanted to see if maybe there was anything still in there. There is. Where's that screwdriver?" I looked around on the floor until I found it.

"I thought you said you didn't believe I had anything to do with it," Duncan said.

"I still don't. In fact, I think I know who did it. Just --" I got back up on the chair --"Let me get this final screw off, and --" It took a few seconds, and then for the second time I removed Lilly's vent cover. I handed it to Duncan. "Ha!" I said. "This is it!"

"This is what?" Duncan said. "Veronica, I think I deserve some explanation of what's going on here."

"A couple of days ago," I said, "I was in the poolhouse over at Logan's. I went into the bedroom to change into my swimsuit, and when I looked up at the ceiling I saw a camera in the overhead fan."

"A camera?" Duncan asked. No, a pencil sharpener. Idiot.

The thing is, I know Duncan's not stupid. He gets excellent grades. But there's definitely some kind of disconnect between his kind of intelligence and the kind that lets you live in the real world.

Logan could live in the real world. He might find it hard to tone down his casual abuse of everyone and everything, but if he were tossed out of the house tomorrow with nothing but the clothes on his back, he'd find a way, eventually, to survive. (I, of course, would flourish.)

"Yes. I called Logan in and we found another one -- then we found that the entire place was wired, and that there were hundreds of tapes hidden behind one of the walls."

"They were all women my father slept with," Logan said. "He labelled every single tape." He stood on the chair and started to reach into the vent.

"No!" I said. "We need to make sure no one touches it. Not until my father gets here."

He stopped, then said, "I can see the label. It's my father's handwriting, all right – and it's got Lilly's name on it."

Duncan asked, "But why would Lilly's name be on -- oh my God. You don't mean --"

"I do mean, Duncan," I said. "Logan and I saw a bit of two of the other tapes. Lilly and Aaron Echolls were having an affair."

"Lilly wouldn't –"

"Lilly did," Logan snapped. "Along with, apparently, half the female population of Neptune. I don't think he ever slept with your mother or Veronica. Everyone else seems to be open for debate."

"It gets worse," I said. "You know how Aaron is. Devoted to his public image. If a tape got out of him having sex with an underage girl –"

This time, Duncan got it right off the bat. "You think he killed Lilly."

Logan said, "I'm sure of it. Who else had the motivation? Who else around here is capable of something like this, and cunning enough to cover it up for a year and a half?" You mean, besides me?

I loved that he was making my case for me.

"I know your Dad can have a quick temper," Duncan said, "But –"

"My 'Dad' has been beating me with a belt regularly since I was about six years old," Logan said. "He could have done this. Trust me."

Duncan insisted on standing on the chair and looking into the vent himself; he saw Lilly's name on the tape, sighed, and stepped down.

"Okay," he said. "What do we do now?"

What he did next was call my father. I explained the entire chain of events exactly as I'd explained it to Duncan, and told Dad, that no, we hadn't touched the tape.

"Then how do you know it's the same as the other two, sweetie?"

"Educated guess. Look. Can you get a warrant for here and the Echolls poolhouse, or not?"

"I can try."

He succeeded. An hour later he was there at the Kane estate; he was able to get the warrant so quickly because he specified exactly where and what he'd be searching for.

And this way it was public record that he took the tape out of the vent, not me, Logan, or Duncan.

We all went down to the station, where Dad independently questioned Duncan and Logan, and had one of his deputies question me, to make sure there wouldn't be any accusations of bias if it ever came time to arrest Aaron Echolls.

Things moved fairly quickly after that. Dad was able to get a search warrant for the Echolls estate, finding not only Aaron's do-it-yourself porn studio, but also the belts that Logan said Aaron beat him with – some of which still had forensic evidence and markings proving they'd been used to beat someone. The marks on Logan's back pretty clearly indicated who.

Aaron also had no alibi for the time of the murder. He said he'd been relaxing out by the pool the entire time, that Lilly had never been over there, and that of course he'd never killed her.

He was arrested not long afterwards, on one count of murder in the second degree, one count of child abuse, and five counts of statutory rape.

Lynn Echolls came forward after the arrest and confirmed a lot of what Logan had said – also confirming, publicly, the existence of the tapes and the hidden cameras, and the numerous affairs Aaron had had. Aaron's lawyer managed to get any tapes not directly connected to the case against him suppressed – but the search warrants were ruled legal.

In the case of the poolhouse, the courts ruled that Logan had every right to invite me in – and in the case of the Kane estate, the courts ruled that Aaron had no standing to object. Celeste certainly wasn't objecting.

Any irritation she felt at the way I snuck into the house to rifle through her daughter's room was quickly replaced by the joy of her son's no longer being the prime suspect.

I was thrilled with how well I'd managed to pull off the frame-job. With Logan, Duncan, and Dad's unwitting help, with any luck, Aaron Echolls would ultimately be doing, well, probably life in prison.

He was almost guaranteed some jail time, for statutory rape, if nothing else. The tapes proved that pretty much conclusively. The murder charge would be a bit harder – but they had motive, they had means, and they had a truckload of circumstantial evidence. Not much forensic evidence – someone had mysteriously wiped the videotape clean – but after a bit over a year they hadn't expected to find any.

After all, anyone cunning enough to hide a brutal murder like this for a year certainly was cunning enough to have long since thrown away all of their clothes – I mean, cutting them into tiny pieces, say, and spreading them throughout garbage cans in the greater Neptune area.

Hypothetically, you understand.

Duncan regained part of his standing at Neptune High – but he actually wasn't especially interested. While he was glad not to be spit on and generally thought of as a murderer, he decided he didn't especially want to be popular anymore.

This was good. That meant that my road to the class presidency was free and clear.

Oh? I didn't tell you I was running?