Author's Note: Mostly Veronica Mars plot points this time.

And: Grrrr! The good shows get cancelled. Crap like Family Guy gets resurrected. Proof positive of the nonexistence of a benign God, if you ask me.

Disclaimer: The great Veronica Mars was created by Rob Thomas. The equally great Buffy was created by Joss Whedon.

X X X X X

But before I went to the Kane residence (assuming I could talk my way inside -- i.e., whether or not Celeste Kane was home), I was going to find out where Warren Mears lived.

(I remembered his house from the I Was Made to Love You episode, but not the street he lived on. Or the house number, for that matter.) Besides, I owed Dad an hour or two of phone answering and general office work.

We didn't have nearly the same kind of sophisticated software we had in Neptune, but then, that was 1997, not 2005. It certainly had enough to let me look up his address, and maybe a bit more.

Dad was talking to a client when I got there. One of the wealthier Sunnydale denizens -- I missed the simplicity of "'09er" -- wanted Dad to track his son and make sure he was staying clean -- no drugs, no booze. Not exciting on the face of it, and it probably wouldn't be exciting once everything was played out, but the deromanticization of the private eye has swung a bit too far past realistic. Sure, most cases are routine, but there was almost always the possibility of something wacky and unplanned going down. Maybe the son would recognize he was being followed and A, run, B, try to beat Dad up, C, pay someone else to beat him up, or D, something unpredictable. Which around here could mean turning into a werewolf or demon of some sort, so I was kind of hoping for not too exciting.

A little filing, an answered call (telemarketer), and then it was time to get back to my own case. I found Warren's address quickly enough.

I also found out that he was going to a private school -- one for gifted children about forty miles or so away, in Santa Carolita. Which answered the question of how he could live in Sunnydale but still only attend Sunnydale high for one semester. A later semester, probably. No doubt his charming personality would eventually get him kicked out. Not vital to tracking him down and, metaphorically, beating the answers out of him, but still, good to know.

Dad was going to get to work that night; I ordered some pizza so we could have a little quality daddy-daughter time before he went out. He hadn't gotten any calls from Aaron Echolls yet. Thank goodness.

Of course, there was always the possibility that an elaborate invitation awaited at my home mailbox. But I doubted it. That would have been evidence -- of his lying nature, if nothing else. And Aaron Echolls was too publicity-conscious to leave anything like that lying around.

I did bring something up that I thought wouldn't get me in too much trouble with the entity that put me here. I said, "I've been thinking about Abel Koontz." Abel Koontz was another person who'd made the jump from our world to this one. Nothing about Lilly's murder seemed to have changed. This was good in that it meant I knew who'd done it, but bad in that I couldn't jump ahead and just say that.

Still, maybe I could jump thought it. The rules were that I couldn't bring up any future knowledge. That didn't necessarily mean I couldn't suggest a line of thinking. (And we'd already come up with the fact that the shoes found at the "murderer's" residence were ones that had been in her room immediately after she died.)

"Veronica," he said disapprovingly, "You're not investigating this behind my back, are you?" Well, not at the moment, so, "No." It would actually be pretty hard for me to do. Think about it. With the rape, there were different circumstances, different people, and possibly a different second rapist. With Lilly's death?

Everything was the same. The pink shoes. The firing of my father for daring to suggest that the Kane family might have done it. (Though, honestly, Mayor Dick Wilkins? Probably isn't too interested in having an actual competent sheriff around to investigate the 'suspicious deaths' around the town. He likely was going to have to find some reason to get rid of Dad anyway, and this was just a good excuse.)

I did wonder if the Mayor would play a similar role in my senior year that "Mayor" Woody Goodman had in mine. I doubted one part of it would be the same; Mayor Wilkins was as ethically bankrupt as they come, but I doubted he was harboring any pedophilic tendencies.

I never accepted that as an excuse for Cassidy Casablancas having become the bastard he'd become, by the way. It was an explanation; it let me see him as, on some level, something of a victim. But he'd made the choices himself. I came so close to shooting the bastard that night on the roof of the Neptune Grand --

Okay. Focus, Veronica. New universe, new game, new players. Warren Mears was no Cassidy Casablancas. And I couldn't help in this investigation too much because there would be too much temptation for me to force the investigation off the rails with my knowledge of whodunit.

Trust me, I only look sanguine about what's going on. But more than a little part of me was tempted to go to that dinner with Aaron Echolls with a plus one: Dad's gun.

Getting back to the conversation: "Good," Dad said. "So, what's your thinking?"

"Cui bono?"

He blinked. "I'm not sure I get what you mean."

"Yeah. A little elliptical of me. Sorry. Going by the assumption that Abel Koontz didn't actually kill Lilly. Why would he confess to it?"

"He's crazy?"

"Not with the evidence. Not with Lilly's shoes making their mysterious jump from her bedroom to Koontz's apartment. Let's try again."

"Well, it can't be because he's being paid."

"True. Dead men spend no loot."

I didn't need to say anything else; I'd gotten the chain of logic started. "But maybe," he said with a grin on his face, "Just maybe, someone else will benefit. Good idea, Veronica."

I smiled. "I try."

"You often succeed."

"Often?" I did my best to sound indignant.

"Don't push it, sweetie."

X X X X X

And now it was time for a completely necessary emotional confrontation. This wouldn't be a lot of fun to live through -- it hadn't been fun the first time -- but it had to be done.

I'd made an excuse to Duncan that I'd left my English notes for the day in my locker. (A lie, of course. I hadn't made any notes. I didn't need to; we'd moved on from romantic poetry and were now reading Pride and Prejudice. Not my favorite work, even with the cynicism, but I'd read and absorbed it pretty damn thoroughly. Certainly enough that all I needed to do was skim it this time around.

I might want to tone that down a bit. Going through high school for the second time in three years, and knowing 90 of the material cold before the teachers opened their mouths, was leading me to become a bit conspicuous, because I didn't take notes, I used study hall for personal reading and catching up on my cases, and yet I was still in the top 5 in every class.

Which, in fact, had been Duncan's objection. "I didn't see you taking any notes today," he'd said.

"So you watched me for the entire class? How stalker-like. Am I going to need to call Don Lamb and swear out a restraining order?"

I could hear a faint smile at the other end of the phone. Rare but welcome. Duncan hadn't been smiling much recently. To be fair, it wasn't like he'd had a lot to smile about. "Somehow I don't think he'd listen." Of course, I was about to go over and start a conversation guaranteed to make him stop smiling for weeks.

"True. So, can I get the notes?"

And that's why I was here. Thank the gods, Jake and Celeste were away -- a fundraising dinner for the WWF. I didn't care whether they were trying to save the red panda or the Undertaker. The important thing was, they weren't here.

"Here," he said when I stepped inside.

"Thanks," I said, then took a deep breath. "Look. The notes aren't the only reason I came."

"Yes?"

"I need to explain something to you." And then I told him what happened at Cordelia's party -- making sure to stress how much of it I didn't remember.

"I don't want to talk about it," he said when I was done.

"I'm sure you don't," I said. "But I'd like to find out what I was doing from the time I got slipped the GHB to the time I woke up in the morning in a back bedroom minus my underwear or any company. And I have it on good authority --" good enough, anyway -- "that you were seen leaving said bedroom."

"What?"

The next part was painful for me, because I knew it wasn't true. "I wouldn't have pictured you as the kind of person to enjoy having sex with an unconscious woman." Putting as much acid into my voice as I could, I said, "Imagine my surprise."

"I didn't. I wouldn't."

"The witnesses say differently."

Duncan shook his head. "That's not what I meant," he said. "I can't believe you'd think I would do that."

I didn't. "What else am I supposed to think?"

"That it was mutual!" he yelled.

Feigning surprise, I said, "How can it be mutual when I don't remember any of it?"

"That's not possible," he said. "I was there. I was feeling kind of woozy and went into the bedroom to lie down for a few minutes, and, and you smiled at me and told me how good it was to see me, and then we kissed, and --" He stopped. "And I never for a moment thought that you weren't completely conscious. I thought it was a thing between us, to keep it quiet and pretend it never happened."

"If it was this great grand loving moment," I said, "Why keep it secret?" I knew the answer. I knew that the answer was wrong. But the plotline of my own life demanded this.

Duncan needed to know the truth. Which meant I need to know the lie. And at this point, I didn't. Officially.

And the explosion came. "Because you're my sister! Your mom and my father had an affair! And I knew about it and in the heat of the moment I didn't care that you were my sister. All I could think about was that I loved you and you loved me and --"

"Whoa," I said. "Who told you I was your sister?"

Circumstances held. "Mom did."

"Well, she was wrong."

"How can you know that? Your mom and my Dad did have an affair. You can't deny that."

"I'm not," I said. "But just because they had an affair doesn't mean that I was the result. There's only one way to prove that, and we haven't tried that yet."

He got suspicious. "And the sex?"

I blew out a breath between pursed lips. "I believe you."

"You --"

"I believe you," I said. "I don't think you took advantage of me when you thought I was unconscious. That you did without knowing isn't your fault."

"What I did is rape."

The last thing I needed was guilty Duncan right about now. "I'm not even sure it is by California criminal law. And even if it is, you didn't have sex with me against my will, and you didn't take advantage of me while I was drunk, as far as you knew at the time. I don't expect you have secret mutant powers that let you figure these things out. Which only leaves whether I'm your sister."

"It's not like that's trivial, Veronica."

"No, but it's easy to find out. All we need is someone willing to give us a DNA test." Rarer back in 1997, but not nonexistent by any stretch of the imagination. "So we'll go, we'll learn that we're not related, and we can put this behind us. Okay?"

"Okay," he said finally.

"Good. Now. Did you see anything else at that party that was suspicious?"

"I wasn't there on an investigation."

"You know what I mean." I took a deep breath. "Specifically, did you see anyone else go into the bedroom?"

His fists clenched. "If I had, I would have killed them." He probably would have, too. "I saw that guy Warren hanging around outside, but the musicians chased him off."

"Okay. Thanks." Then I reached forward and gave him a half-hug. It probably looked as awkward as it felt, but it needed to be done. "It'll be okay."

"I hope so."

And now I had two excuses to talk with Warren; I had his address; and I'd talked to everyone at the party I could think to talk to.

Tomorrow should be fun.