Author's Note: Happy Halloween . . .

Disclaimer: Joss, Rob Thomas, me: Buffy, Veronica Mars, the storyline.

X X X X X

One learns quite a bit hanging about in a sheriff's office, and then with the ex-sheriff. Dad and I didn't exactly have an Encyclopedia Brown-Chief Brown-like relationship; I wasn't "the secret terror of crime in Sunnydale," though Sheila Kelly did remind me a bit of Sally Kimball. So he didn't give all the details of his cases, especially the more graphic ones.

Still. I knew the equipment burglars used to break into private homes, mansions, office buildings, businesses, and apartments. (The business part would come in handy later in the evening.)

I also knew about alarm systems. And I knew the kind the Kanes had; it was highly sophisticated, as befitting a software magnate like Jake Kane, but it was beatable, if you knew how and weren't going after the big-ticket items or trying to break into the big wall safe. And it didn't simply go off if you entered the house.

I doubt they'd have sophisticated security protecting the vent in Lilly's room. And there was a vent; I remembered it, and I remembered Lilly hiding things there, even if the room itself was different from the one in Neptune.

Of course, I still had to get past Dad, but that was surprisingly easy. All I had to say is, "Snyder 'volunteered' students to take kids around tonight, so I have to hustle back to school."

"Nice costume," Dad said wryly, noting my black shirt, pants, hat, and shoes, and the oversized sack I was carrying, and the big dollar bill on the shirt. "I hope it's not too authentic."

"Relax, Dad," I said. "I'll get the money back to the bank before they even notice it's gone."

"Funny, sweetie," he said. "Just be careful Don Lamb doesn't see you. It would suit his sense of humor to haul you in for acting suspicious."

"Like he could catch me," I said.

"Sweetie, I know he's a complete incompetent, but even a busted clock is right twice a day."

"I won't give him any cause," I said, hoping like hell I wasn't lying.

I left at four o'clock and tracked down where Xander, Buffy and Willow were getting their kids. I listened to Xander's instructions: "Only go there for chocolate." After he was done, I walked out to where they could see me.

Buffy noticed me first. "Veronica? What are you doing here? I thought you managed to escape the wrath of Snyder."

"I did," I said. "I just wanted to see how everyone here was doing." They were all wearing their canon costumes.

Then Xander noticed me. "Hold on, kids," he said like someone who was desperately trying to avoid cussing in front of children. "Hello, manhunter," he said. "Come to laugh at our misery?"

"Naah, just thought I'd see how easy it was to steal candy from babies. But if you want me to laugh, I'll be happy to oblige you."

"I'd rather you leave," he said.

"Planning to do that anyway," I said. "But I have six words to say to you that I don't want anyone else to hear."

"I can't think of any six words you could say to me that I'd be interested in hearing, up to and including, Xander Harris, you've won the lottery."

"Six words and I'll go away. Otherwise I follow you."

We took several steps away and he said, "What?"

"I know about you and Lilly."

He didn't seem confused; he didn't act like he had no idea what I was talking about; he didn't say "What the hell?" or anything in like it.

In short, he didn't act like someone who hadn't been spending time with Lilly would be asking.

After I said it, he glared at me as though I were a known child molester for about five seconds, then turned on his heels and walked back towards his group of children. "Let's go," he told them curtly, and they walked off.

Buffy came up and asked, "What did you say?"

"That's between him and me, I said. "Let's just say I'm trying to work out the differences between us -- actually, I'm trying to work out what they are, 'and getting help from no one. If he wants to tell you, he can. I won't. Because while it may be my job to puzzle it out, it's not my secret to give away." I'd give away secrets in a cold second if they directly related to the solving of a crime, but otherwise, no. I could give you all kinds of grand moral reasons why, and truth is I do have a conscience so that would be part of it, but honestly it's easier to figure things out if other people aren't getting in your way. "Anyway," I finished, "I love the dress."

"Thanks," she said. "I'm hoping someone else likes it too."

"I'm sure they will," I said. "Now, if you'll excuse me --"

I left and wandered around town, 'coincidentally' arriving at the Kane estate around the time darkness fell. I'd already seen Duncan and his group, and they were nowhere nearby, and the Kane limo passed me as I was walking up their street, so now no one was home.

I hoped.

There was a group of children coming down the street, led by some Sunnydale High student I didn't recognize, in a giant rabbit costume. The kids were vampires, and pirates; one was a lion, one was a devil, and one had a hockey mask and was carrying an axe.

Marvelous. That's what the situation called for: A six foot-tall rabbit and Jason Voorhees, Jr.

Well, I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.

And that's when Ethan Rayne, somewhere, said "Showtime."

I looked at the approaching kids.

The good news was that the rabbit appeared to have gone to Party Town.

The bad news is that none of the kids had. Fortunately, growing up in Sunnydale seemed to have instilled a sense of self-preservation in the guy in the rabbit costume, because as soon as he saw what had happened to the kids, he, um, rabbited.

The kids started running wild.

The lion ' not full-sized, but dangerous nonetheless 'came charging towards me.

I had no intentions of being easy prey. I scrambled up a tree, edged out as far on the branches as I could, and jumped for the top of the wall.

I already knew it wasn't electrified. It helped having dated one of the residents of the house.

I looked at the ten foot drop and got ready to lower myself down when I heard a loud roar from behind me.

Since I was already in "Veronica focuses on the problem to the exclusion of everything else in the world" mode, this startled me enough that I fell off the wall.

Well, that solved one of my problems . . .

X X X X X

In my head, of course, I'd had all this going smoothly; I'd forgotten that some of the affected kids might have been wandering around near the Kane mansion.

So, as I picked myself up from the ground inside the Kane estate, I cursed myself, while at the same time thinking that things could have been worse:

I could have fallen outside the wall.

I couldn't hear the lion, or any of the little vampires for that matter, but I wasn't letting that slow down my run for the house. I pulled down my mask as I ran, just in case there were any hidden cameras I wasn't aware of.

Given my costume, I suppose it would have been natural for me to try to scale the side of the house and go in through a window, but the Kane house lacked any convenient trellises, and I wasn't Buffy to be able to jump up and catch the porch roof and pull myself over.

Instead, I simply went in the back door.

Not that he'd left it open. Jake Kane wasn't that stupid. But one time. Lilly and I had been using the pool, and Lilly had shown me where the spare key was hidden 'of all places, under a fake rock. One of the first things most burglars look for; but the Kanes A, had a rock garden with about two hundred or so rocks, so a burglar would have to be patient or lucky; B, the key only worked on the main back door, not the front door, and the rock garden was in the front of the house (using the key there triggered an alarm); and C, you had to twist it in the opposite way from the way you normally twist keys. This didn't trigger an alarm, but how many people would think to simply turn it in the other direction?

I opened the back door and looked around for any signs that the Kanes had upgraded their alarm system. They hadn't.

Even if they had, I was fairly safe. This was the key behind why I was doing this tonight:

Right now, the police were busy fighting off pirates, demons, vampires, werewolves, and soldiers. Or they were simply holed up in the station.

And even if they hustled straight here, they'd have to fight their way through the chaos.

Of course, even knowing this, I wasn't simply going to blindly assume that I was safe, and casually stroll through the house. This was a surgical strike.

I went up to Lilly's room. Still a shrine to their daughter; I doubt the place had been touched, except for routine cleaning, since she'd died over a year ago.

I certainly couldn't tell any difference. It almost made me want to bow my head and wait a moment before walking in.

Almost. Lilly would kick my ass if she thought I was going along with this deification. She wanted to be "worshipped" in her way, but this wasn't it.

She'd want me going after Logan again. I might, at some point; but maybe I'd see if I could build our relationship up to the point of actual friendship again, rather than having us jump almost directly from loathing to lusting the way we did back in Neptune.

Maybe then we could be somewhat more stable.

Or maybe we would just end up as genuine friends. For all of his psychotic jackassery, Logan can be fiercely devoted to those he genuinely cares about. (How else would you explain his devotion to the waste of oxygen that was Dick Casablancas?)

Anyway, that wasn't important at the moment. Using my flashlight, I looked around the room until I found the "message pen" that Lilly had been using to pass notes to Weevil. It took me a second or two to figure out the mechanism, but eventually I pried out the note hidden inside.

Bingo. And bango. And bongo, all three. It was a note from Xander to Lilly. Xander, as you might have expected, sounded kind of overwhelmed.

It wasn't hard to figure out the nature of Lilly's interest in Xander. Lilly would have felt as though she'd been burned by the bad boys in her life (even though Aaron was next on that list). And Xander Harris was about as far from bad boy as it was possible to be at Sunnydale High without actually being a nerd. And of course, he wasn't bad-looking, which was always a Lilly criterion.

I put the pen back together, got out my screwdriver, and started working on the vent.

One screw.

Two screws.

Three screws.

Four screws.

The vent was on the floor.

I peered into the vent --

Success.

Possibly.

There was a videotape there.

And then, in the category of worst timing ever, the nominations are:

A Sunnydale Police car, pulling up in front of the Kane Estate.

You'd think a city full of rioting kids might have slowed them down.

And you'd have, apparently, been wrong.