(Everything is lost - Maggie eckford)
Veronica bite into her burrito and screwed up her nose a little when a few chews revealed she'd captured a mouthful of mostly green pickle.
This is why she shouldn't her dad pick up dinner. Setting the offending morsel back down on the plate she turned over the evidence on her father's desk. Most of this she knew he wouldn't want her to see.
Her finger felt bare and her engagement ring was tucked safely away in her purse until this craziness died down, and they got to the bottom of this.
Sharing her and Logan's plans for Nuptials with her dad just felt wrong before they laid Eli Navarro to rest, especially since he no longer had a future.
Part of her couldn't help but feel it was somehow her fault. She'd been so distracted lately, so wrapped up in her own bliss, she'd almost taken her eye off the road ahead.
Sometimes she did suck in the friends department. Like Junior year when Wallace had taken off to Chicago for several months after he'd found out about his dad?
She'd even missed Mac's obvious distress and budding relationship with her boyfriend's roommate.
Could she really have lost her touch and Professor Landry had been the killer in front of her the whole time?
Weevil's juvenile case file was spread open alongside the pictures of the crime scene. The mugshots showed the evolution of a teenage motorcycle loving bad boy and his ever increasing patchwork of tattoos. She was no stranger to this loss. Logan had told she wasn't a killer, but things like this happening to people she loved definitely fed her inner demons.
Swallowing against the lump in her throat, Veronica scolded herself to remain detached. It wasn't like this was the first time she'd seen the gruesome murder photos of someone that she loved, she'd spent almost two years looking at the crime scene footage circulating the internet of Lily Kane, her dead best friend while she had been hunting for her killer.
She just had to maintain that cool analytical detachment, and break it down into smaller pieces, like a jigsaw that needed puzzled together to show her the whole picture of what had happened to him. Part of her always feared she'd be seeing images of Weevil like this someday; he'd tried hard to change from his gangster past. His probation was almost over.
They'd been talking about him attending night school, and Dean Odell had been enquiring with Neptune school district and his parole officer to get his High School Diploma released because Sheriff Lamb had arrested him for involvement in Thumpers murder before he'd been allowed to graduate.
The bloodied shirt found in the incinerator was familiar. She recognized it was one that Professor Landry had been wearing during the faculty student mixer during her first few weeks at Hearst.
It felt good to have her father back in the Sheriff's office. It gave her hope that the wheels of justice would get their man and grind them under its heel for what had happened to the Dean and Weevil.
She would make sure it did. We will use the Mars Powers for Good.
Mindy Odell was insistent that Professor Landry had been with her during the hours that her husband had been murdered. The timing of the Lilith House assault on the Hearst Faculty Offices, and timings of her call to Landry at the Neptune Grand, and her car being checked back in with the valet seemed to agree with what she had been confessing.
She admitted to being the one to refill her husband's prescription, she also admitted to her husband being the man overheard arguing with Professor Landry by concierge at the Neptune Grand. Both accounts seemed to match up, and forensic evidence of Dean Odells computer during last week when she had been helping Josh skip town, had shown the fingerprints on the keyboard were from Steve Botando.
The man who'd killed Sheriff Lamb.
She twisted the small evidence bag in her hands, the one that held a small bug found in Professor Landry's phone.
Who had been listening in on Professor Landry?
Why?
He swore that he was being set up… and he'd almost been ruled out of the investigation until that shirt had shown up.
It didn't make sense though.
Landry was an expert profiler. He spent time training FBI agents, he had a career studying the mistakes people made. He had years of knowledge and experience if he wanted to outsmart a small town Sheriff like Donald Lamb.
He wouldn't have been as sloppy as this.
Her fingers lingered over the security images of Weevil arriving to work that morning and the last few stills of him entering the car park before going to maintenance department under the main campus building, his last known movements before he left the same way in a body bag.
No one else had left in the last few hours after his estimated time of death, which meant the killer had likely used the access in the main building so they knew their way around. They also knew how to avoid the campus security systems.
It was detailed, methodical, and organized.
She had seen Professor Landry's lesson plans. He was brilliant, instinctual and an inspiring educator…. But attention detail and being organized were not in his skillset.
Was it so methodical and detailed that this potential cover up was actually sloppy?
"Has anyone told you, you look very convincing in this office?" Veronica chirped as her father walked back in. She knew he disapproved of her meddling in on-going cases now he was official and she should be a civilian.
"Care to tell me why you are perusing Weevil's case file?" Keith Mars retorted, arching an eyebrow.
"Trying to pick out the best angle to use at his memorial service?" she replied dryly, her mouth quirking up slightly when she picked up one of Weevil giving the mugshot his best Blue Steel impression.
"Did you eat my sandwich?" Keith asked pointing at the plate beside Veronica.
"No" Veronica denied, her face reddening before she picked up Mindy Odells latest statement her father had placed on the desk before climbing into his seat. "Any luck making our canary sing?" she asked while watching her dad inspect the half eaten burrito.
"Nope, so far they are sticking to their original statements. They both agree they saw Dean Odell the night he died, but the parking valet check in corroborates that Mindy Odell returned from Hearst campus before the ear witness heard the final gunshot that killed Dean Odell" he sighed. "And we have absolutely no reason why Steve Botando's keyboard would have been traded to the computer where the staged suicide note was written. Nothing but dead ends."
Her father looked as frustrated as Veronica felt.
"Then maybe we need to have a closer look at Steve Botando?" Veronica suggested. Her father and Deputy Sacks had been kept at arms-length with the Botando police shooting since they were both witnesses in the death of Sheriff Lamb.
It also meant, that his potential involvement in the death of Dean Odell had been overlooked.
Not that it would have mattered, Steve Botando and Sheriff Lamb were both deceased long before someone had tried to dispose of evidence and killed Weevil.
Someone was going to a lot of trouble to point the finger at Mindy Odells ex-husband Steve.
What was the thread linking all this together?
Veronica felt her fathers hand clasping onto hers, breaking her out of her reverie.
"What you say we get some take-out from that little Thai place?" he suggested.
She smiled weakly and nodded. Logan was busy doing some economics assignment and she'd promised to spend the night at home with her dad after the long weekend.
They'd made more progress in the last 24 hours with the Dean's case after that tip-off about Mindy Odells affair with Professor Landry.
Maybe it was just as simple as a wife and her lover bumping off her husband for the insurance money?
"Did you ask them about Weevil?" Veronica asked quietly picking up her coat.
"Credit card statements place them both at a bistro just off El Camino, I'm trying to get surveillance footage but it's in Santo Rita County and we don't have jurisdiction there, so I can't run down that lead further until I hear back from the state police and local Sheriffs Department" he sighed following his daughter out and locking his office.
"You're letting her leave?" Veronica frowned as she watched Deputy Taylor process Mindy Odells release papers.
"Baiting a hook, I have Deputy Jones and Briar tailing her" Keith explained quietly.
"So there's nothing we can do?" she asked.
"Not exactly, I was hoping you could pay a visit to an old colleague. I want you to find out if Vinnie Van Lowe had any reason to follow Professor Landry's phone" Keith said.
"You want to find out if he's responsible for bugging Professor Landrys phone?" she queried.
"Let's just see if anything checks out. I have warrants to check bank statements to see if Landry paid Van Lowe to stay quiet. We don't know if the night he died is really the first time Cyrus Odell found out about his wifes affair. I just want to make sure that Dean Odell wasn't a former client" Keith explained.
"You know he's going to want you to sweeten the pot before he gives up any information about his clients" Veronica cautioned. They both knew that Van Lowe very well could have been tailing the Deans wife, but that he was much more likely to blackmail the clandestine lovers than reveal his discoveries to the clients he overcharged for his services.
He was unethical and a disgrace to the profession, but he was still a Hell of a P.I.
"I'm willing to work on that, he was arrested for loitering and trespass, worked up a few parking tickets. The Sheriffs department may be willing to overlook some of this in gratitude for his co-operation" Keith sighed.
"And compromise the integrity of the badge?" Veronica said with a mock gasp.
"I only said there could be the possibility…" he shrugged.
"With distinctions like that, I'm amazed you never went to law school" she smiled and followed Sheriff Mars out into the chilly night air.
"Okay, so I get you are in the Nerd Zone like a Dork… but I got the full season boxset of Pretty Little Liars and I know how much you hate watching that stuff when Veronicas around, so what you say we get pizza binge before its ruined by Ms Teen Detective?" Dick announced as he carried the large pizza into the penthouse suite in the Neptune Grand.
"Uh… Dick-" Logan said in an urgent tone but it was too late.
The boxes fell to the floor as Dick saw what had his roommate so concerned as he looked into the face of a man he'd hoped never to see.
"Hello Dad," He swallowed.
