LO, I WILL TELL YOU A MYSTERY

Chapter 3 Mystery of the Day

Another excerpt from Veronica's diary for the day:

I don't confide easily in people. The only ones I totally trust are Dad and Wallace. Even then, it took me almost a year to build up the nerve to tell Wallace about being molested at the Party, and Dad still doesn't know (unless, of course, he's learned how to decrypt my diary)

Yet I blurted out much of the Lily story to the Girardi girl, a virtual stranger. Why? Maybe it was just the weird coincidence that both of us had lost girlfriends to violence. But I wonder if it's something else: if we were MEANT to be friends. But, if so, who or what could have done the " meaning"?

Fortunately, before I revealed anything further, we got distracted.

------

"Follow that car!" yelled Veronica, breaking the intimate mood.

Joan reflexively obeyed, turning her key in the ignition and pulling out of the parking slot. "What car?"

"That blue Mercedes."

"I see it." She hit the accelerator, at the same time feeling as if somebody had just dumped her in an action movie. "Would you mind telling me why we're doing this?"

"I saw a guy snatch a lady's purse, while we were talking. Then he got in the car and drove off."

"That's terrible." Joan had been too wound up in the exchanged confidences to pay much attention to the outside world.

"More than that, it's mysterious. If you have a car like that, you're rich. In Neptune we call people like that oh-niners, from their ZIP code. In which case, you don't go around snatching purses. At worst, you hire somebody else to do it."

"Maybe he stole the car," said Joan, starting to get in the spirit of the thing. This was cool, an actual adventure instead of a plodding mission.

"Still mysterious. What could be in the purse comparable to the value of the car?"

"Hey! He's pulling into an alley."

"Follow him."

Joan obeyed. But the guy suddenly hit his breaks, apparently finding the alley a dead end, and Joan had to follow suit to avoid a rear-end collision. The driver got out and started running to his right. To Joan's horror, Veronica tugged her door open and chased after him.

For one second Joan was tempted to follow Veronica. Then she remembered the last time she had blindly followed somebody into a hairy situation: she had wound up in a junkyard with a half-crazy boy who had a gun. That had turned out to be God's plan at the time, but it was not an experience that she wanted to repeat.

But she couldn't drive away. That would leave Veronica stranded in danger.

Joan took out her cell phone and debated whether to call her father. Tattling was a no-no for a teenager, but Joan was 18 and understood that circumstances altered cases. Would Judith still be alive today if somebody had "tattled" about her drug problem?

"Will Girardi here."

"Dad, Veronica's run off."

"What?"

"Can you have Mr. Mars listen in?"

"Yeah, this is a speaker-phone -- OK."

Joan tried to summarize what had happened. The Dads seemed to argue for a while, apparently away from the microphone so Joan could not hear the details, then her own father got back.

"Joan, we don't want you to be a target, so back out of that alley. Try to park nearby so that Veronica can spot you when if she comes back."

"When," she could hear Mr. Mars voice correcting the conditional.

"Whatever," muttered Joan. She was putting her gear in reverse when she spotted a familiar figure. "Hey, she's coming back."

"Then let her in and get the hell out of there."

But Veronica did not get in immediately. Instead she crossed between the cars, then knelt at the Mercedes' back right tire. Joan couldn't see what she was doing, her own hood being in the way. But after a few seconds the girl straightened out again and walked to Joan's car. Joan went into reverse the instant Veronica closed the door.

"Is that my Dad on the phone? Awesome -- Dad, tell the police to go to an alley between fifth and fourth street off of T -- They'll probably trust Mr. Girardi -- they'll find a guy in a blue Mercedes with a flat tire and a stolen wallet -- he has the stolen wallet, not the car."

Joan heard some furious squawking on the cell phone.

"Um, yeah, we can discuss that at home. Bad connection, ssssss, I'm losing you." She snapped the phone shut.

----------

Veronica told her story back at the hotel. Present were the Girardis, Mr. Mars, and a woman from the FBI. Apparently Joan's Dad had met the FBI lady after the courthouse bombing in Arcadia the previous January. Joan was just relieved to see that it wasn't Lucy Preston, who had tried to pin the bombing on some of her school friends.

"I wasn't really trying to catch the guy when I chased him. After all, he might have a gun, and all I had was my taser. He might have disposed of the evidence, too. But I did get him a way from the Mercedes long enough to flatten one of the tires. Once I was gone, I figured he'd double back and try to drive away again."

The F.B.I. agent sighed. "You realize, of course, that poking holes in people's tires is illegal? But if something comes of this, we might overlook it."

"If you catch a guy with a lady's pocketbook, and find out why he stole it, wouldn't that be something?" Veronica seemed self-confident.

"Chief Girardi convinced us to put up a watch on the alley. We'll see. I'll join them now, and get back to you." The F.B.I agent started out the door.

"Give my love to Agent Morris," called out Veronica.

The door shut, and Will turned on Veronica. "Okay, now we can talk in privacy. How dare you put my daughter in danger. Chasing a guy through busy city streets like some B-movie? Cornering a guy who might have had a gun?"

"Will's right," said Mr. Mars, sounding angry for the first time since Joan had met him. "You think that you're invincible because of your brains and that taser. But you're not. Remember when tried to catch Lily's murderer? You'd have died, and horribly, if I hadn't shown up. And it wasn't a slam-dunk for me either; I was in the hospital for a couple of weeks."

"I could tell this was nothing like that."

"You could tell? That might just justify your risking your life, Veronica. It doesn't excuse endangering my old colleague's daughter as well. You're going back to California for the rest of the spring holiday, young lady."

Joan was busy thinking. Was this afternoon's incident an accident, or part of her mission? Her missions seemed to be of two types: helping somebody else, or a learning experience, or both. To be sure, she didn't seem to have learned anything yet, but maybe that's because the mission wasn't over, and she was more convinced than ever that it had to do with Veronica. And leaving God out of it (not an easy thing to do), Joan simply liked Veronica, who seemed to share Grace's pugnacity and seemed to do a better job of fighting back, to boot.. "Don't punish Veronica like that. I'm okay with what happened.".

"It's not okay," Will said. "Considering what might have --"

"DAD! I'm 18 years old and I'm getting married in two months. I'm an adult! Don't I have a right to say when I'm okay?"

Her Dad fell silent, but Joan could guess what he was thinking. Luke had explained to her that, to people unaware of her divine missions, Joan appeared as weirdly unfocused, chasing one enthusiasm after another and then dropping them after a few days. Doubtlessly her father thought she was exercising poor judgement now. But he could not say that in front of the Mars couple.

"All right," Will said finally. "Veronica can stay, but from now on, we concentrate on the loan shark case. No more dragging my daughter into side investigations."

"I'm fine with that," said Mars. "Veronica?"

"Yeah, I promise."

But it did not occur to anybody to extract a promise from Joan---

------

I've screwed up before, like the time I thought the farm commune was a devious cult when they were really just some sensitive kids trying to get away from it all. This time the screw-up was in the tactics, not the deduction. I'm used to having my own car and driving where I please, and it was awkward to have the Girardi girl at the wheel. I'm used to people like Wallace and Mac who nearly always go along with my plans. And even Wallace sometimes complains that I'm too bossy.

I was surprised when she stood up to our Dads and defended me. It didn't fit the way I had sized up her character. I wonder, what makes her tick?

TBC