Author's note: A Veronica Mars-heavy chapter this time. There are two universes being interwoven here and every once in a while the Mars-verse gets to take center stage.
Though we all hope it did better than Willow, Xander and Buffy did.
Disclaimer: Buffy was created by Joss Whedon, Veronica Mars by Rob Thomas, and the plot and Holly Takamura by me.
X X X X X
Recruiting him was a job of work, though, let me tell you. Not that he wasn't eager to go, once I explained that it was all about trying to make sure Aaron Echolls paid for killing Lilly.
No, the problem was the other person who wanted his time.
Immediately after school, I managed to corner Xander -- in the hallway, didn't want to be seen dragging him anywhere, up to and including my "office" -- and told him of my plans to talk with Holly Takamura.
"I'm surprised you want me to come," he said. "Won't I kind of cramp your style?"
"Let's just say that right now, going places by myself after dark? Not seeming like such a wonderful idea. And you're kind of the only person who knows about this." After a second, "You are the only person, right?"
"Yes," he said. "Though I'm still having fantasies about running the man through with a rusty meat hook."
"I still prefer 'arrest and shame in front of the world," I said. "Though that's not bad for a backup plan."
"There you are," I heard a voice say. "Come on, we don't have all day."
"Oh, crap," Xander said as the voice's possessor -- one Cordelia Chase, naturally, because who else could it be? -- walked up.
Only at the last minute did she see me, hidden as I was from her view by Xander. I decided to make the most of it. "And where would you be wanting to go with Xander?" I asked innocently. "Someone you don't like?"
"None of your business, Veronica Mars," she said. "You know how often Giles makes me the messenger girl around here."
Clever Cordelia. A perfectly deceptive answer that doesn't lie in the least. About as subtle as she usually got.
And it gave Xander something to pick up on. After a brief hesitation -- "looking at linoleum," you know, even though he and Cordelia never did have sex, I think -- he said, "Well, you're going to have to tell -- Giles --" and don't think I didn't notice that hesitation -- "That I have something else I have to do today." He looked Cordelia straight in the eye and said seriously. "Something very, genuinely important."
"With her?" Cordelia asked, as though Xander were about to leave on an errand with a random bag lady. Not that Sunnydale had such things.
You'd think it would be a good thing when there's no reason for a town to have any homeless shelters, wouldn't you? And you'd be wrong. Not that Neptune was much better, but at least it gave the rich bored socialites something to fundraise for besides the lesser panda.
No, I don't have anything against the lesser panda.
I said, "With me. You'll just have to fill him in later."
"This is important, Cordy," Xander said. "I wouldn't blow -- Giles -- off for just anything."
"Better not," Cordelia said, and stalked off.
If I told you I was fighting to keep myself from laughing, would you hold it against me? Even given the seriousness of the situation?
As Xander and I walked out to my LeBaron, he said, "I'm honestly kinda surprised you asked me to come along."
"Why?"
"We're not exactly best buds, m—Veronica," Xander said.
"No, and I doubt we ever will be," I said. "Though, who knows? I've been known to make enemies friends and friends enemies before. Still, not my priority. I asked you to come for two reasons. The lesser one is to satisfy everyone that I'm taking my safety seriously."
"Um," he said as we got into the car, "You do realize that in a fight I'm only slightly more useful than a rubber crutch, right? 'cause I may be cool beyond cool, but I'm not Bruce Lee." He grinned mock-cockily (okay, I just wanted to say that) as he spoke.
"Don't sell yourself short," I said. "You might not be Bruce Lee, but you're not Bruce Banner, either. Still," I said, handing him a water pistol. "This might be useful if we actually run across a vampire."
"Or the Wicked Witch of the West." After a second, "Be nice if it affected all vampires that way. Still, if we run across anything else –"
I'd started the car and begun to pull out of the Sunnydale High parking lot. "I'd say how our luck can't be that bad, but I know better than to tempt fate," I said. "Anyway, I'm thinking about going about even better armed. Supplement the water pistols with a real one or two."
"Bullets won't –"
"Kill vampires. I know. But I'll bet they hurt." That would be damned delicate. Dad would hate the idea of me carrying, and would almost certainly deny me permission to get myself licensed. That would mean I'd have to go unlicensed – and Don Lamb would love that. Carrying a concealed, unlicensed firearm in Southern California? Good way to spend some time making the acquaintance of your friendly local prison community.
A quiet minute or two while Xander looked around my car, and then he said, "Two reasons?"
"Right. The other's a bit less flattering to you."
"Believe me, I'm very used to not being flattered. More used to being flattened, actually."
"You wanted to see progress," I said. "You wanted to see that I was working on getting Aaron Echolls jailed –" Xander's smile left his face as though someone had ordered him to stop smiling immediately on pain of being shot – "And not just standing around doing nothing. My father has made progress on getting the man currently in jail cleared. I can't give you the details, because that's his investigation."
"And this is yours," he said. I nodded. "So, basically, you invited me along to get me to shut up?"
"I wouldn't have put it quite that way . . ."
"Doesn't bother me," he said. "And in the future, if there's anything else I can do to help you nail the bastard –"
"If there's anything you can do, I'll let you know." Not in my immediate plans. But why rule it out?
The only important thing I did the rest of the way there was tell him what my cover was: I was Veronica Munson, freelancer working on something for the National Enquirer, and he was a promising young high school reporter I was putting under my wing.
He said, "You are the expert, Veronica, but you look younger than I do."
"Yeah, but I carry myself older," I said.
"That's --" he said with a slightly raised voice, then finished with "Actually true."
"Also, let me take the lead, okay?"
"What would you expect from me?" he asked innocently.
"Xander," I said. "Your goofiness can occasionally be funny and charming. I'd've thought that when I'm trying to find proof that Aaron Echolls actually killed Lilly that that would be one of the times you'd try to take things seriously."
"You-- you're right," he said. "But sometimes, if I don't laugh, I'll go crazy. You know?"
"Trust me on that one," I said. "I have ample experience in repressing things to keep from going crazy." After a second, I added, "And remember, you can't tell anyone what's going on."
He looked offended. I didn't blame him. "I think I've done a pretty good job keeping this secret so far, manhunter."
I let "manhunter" slide. "I know. But it means you can't tell Cordelia either."
Give the boy credit, he lied like a pro. "The only thing I tell Cordy is where to go."
"That would be the janitor's closet, right?"
His mouth moved for about ten seconds, and no sound came out of it. Quite a good impression of a kissing gourami, actually. If they had fish-calling contests, he would have won going away. "How the hell --" he finally said.
"I could give you a long spiel about how I used my keen investigative techniques and finely-tuned deductive abilities, but honestly? Sheer luck." That and having seen Buffy season two about a hundred times, but I suspected he wouldn't be buying that reason. "I saw the two of you sneak into the janitor's closet a few days back. Means she either wanted to kill you where no one else would see -- or make out with you where no one else would see. When I didn't hear any violence -- and no, I didn't eavesdrop, I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine -- I jumped to the other conclusion. And the look on your face right now tells me I was right."
"You can't --"
"Tell anyone either? Relax. I don't gossip. I've been on the vicious end of the rumor mill for far too long to add to the other end. What you and Cordelia do in the privacy of your own closet is your business."
"Yeah, but I'm thinking maybe we should be more careful. You're probably the only student around here who wouldn't either spread the word or be pissed off."
"I might quibble with you about Sheila, but otherwise? Yeah, you got lucky."
We got to the Santa Carolita coffee shop maybe five minutes early and looked around for Holly Takamura, having next to no idea what she looked like. (I thought Takamura might be a clue, but there are enough people of multiracial background in beautiful Southern California that she might be a 6' blonde with a Japanese grandfather.)
As it turned out, she wasn't. A wiry Japanese woman who was maybe an inch shorter than I was walked in a couple of minutes after Xander and I did, clearly looking around. Fairly attractive, and fairly young, though probably not at the "statutory rape" level. I walked over and said, "Ms. Takamura?"
"Ms. Munson?" she said skeptically.
"That's me!" I said enthusiastically. "Come on over and sit down." I gestured towards the table, where Xander was just sitting down with my coffee and his pastry. "Want something?" I asked as we approached.
"I'll have a cappuccino," she said. "Thanks." She seemed doubtful. My apparent age, no doubt. I'd convinced people before. Witness, for example, Jenny Calendar.
"Alex?" I said. "Oh. Holly Takamura, this is Alex Brendon." Xander carefully controlled his reaction. "He's interested in the business and I'm kind of like taking him around with me for a few days as a favor to a friend."
"A burden to one and all," Xander said brightly. As I turned to glare at him, he said, "Right. I'll just go get that cappuccino."
"He wants to become a tabloid reporter?"
I shrugged. "Always a few." A pause, then, "I read the story about you and Aaron Echolls in the LA Express from a few years back. I've been trying to dig up dirt on him and your story seems right up my alley. I wonder why it didn't get bigger play."
She snorted. "Because it was Aaron-fucking-Echolls, of course. After our incident I got a polite visit from his agent."
"You'll never eat lunch in this town again?" I said, hazarding a guess.
"That, and ten grand to keep my mouth shut," she said. "And if you checked the Express, a few weeks later they ran a puff piece on how great Aaron Echolls was -- him and Road to Dead."
"Avoiding a lawsuit?"
"Yup. The report barely got any play anywhere outside of LA."
Xander came back with Ms. Takamura's cappuccino and sat down.
"So far, nothing we can use for the story," I said. "But interesting for background." True, even if not in the way Holly Takamura would assume. It seemed that once Aaron got beyond his initial burst of temper, he was smart enough to at least tell his agent what was going on, and that the agent was smart enough to realize that a carrot/stick approach would probably be their best bit. Still –
"So why are you talking to me now if they paid you off?" I asked.
She said, "It's not like they had me sign a nondisclosure agreement or anything."
"But – 'you'll never eat lunch'?" I asked.
She said, "The definition of courage in a situation like this."
"Huh?" Xander said.
I looked at him pointedly and said, "Outside income, Alex." Then, back to Holly Takamura: "Good for you. What?"
"A regular gig in a TV series shot in New York," she said. "Anyway," she said, "That's not really why you're here and I'd appreciate you leaving that out."
"I tend to leave the details like that to TV Guide," I said. "Unless you got the job by sleeping with one of the producers I don't really care." And honestly? Not even then. I am not, nor will I ever be, gossip girl. "So. You had an affair with Aaron Echolls on the set of Road to Dead."
"Affair is probably the wrong word," she said. "No commitment. Just sex. But yeah. I was playing a witness to a crime his character was investigating – I had two scenes with dialogue and one as a bloody corpse."
Xander snapped his fingers. "I remember that. It was your death that set off his bloody rampage."
"And speaking of rampages," I said, "The story in the Express only hinted. What happened?"
She said, "We'd been sleeping together for a few weeks and I was pretty much done with shooting. We'd gone back to my apartment for one last go, when he saw a life-size owl figurine I had."
"That's where you had the camera." I said, not as a question.
"Big eyes?" Xander said. At my confused look, he said, "To hide the camera."
Right. I should have gotten that.
X X X X X
Yes (Holly Takamura was saying.) He must have caught the glint of the lens, or something. I'm not sure what. But all of a sudden, in the middle of 'Oh god! Oh God!', he stopped abruptly, and, ignoring me, went over to the figurine. After a few seconds, he threw it on the floor as hard as he could. Smashed it.
'If you don't like owls –' I said.
'Where is it?' he said.
Saying 'Where is what?' seemed stupid at that point. 'You just broke it,' I said.
He stormed over and leaned down until his face was only an inch or so from my own and said, 'Not the camera, you fucking slut. The tape. Where's the fucking tape?'
"He'd changed. He'd been dominant before Note to self. Wash mind out. Preferably with an acid bath. Must get this picture out of my head. but this was something way beyond that. He was scaring me.
'I was hoping to keep it,' I said. 'You know. Kind of as a souvenir. And, you know, kind of as pointers to whoever I sleep with later. Because, baby, you know how --" Acid bath. Acid bath.
He backhanded me hard enough that I saw stars. 'Quit lying, bitch. No one's going to sell me out. Tell me where you put the goddamn tape now, or --' He raised his hand like he was going to slap me again.
'Okay. In the drawer -- to the left. Open it up.' He did, and pulled out three tapes. 'That's them.'
'It had better be,' he said. Then he got dressed, and I did the same thing, watching him close the whole time. He'd scared the fuck out of me. It's the reason I gave him the tapes instead of telling him to get fucked, you know? I really thought he was ready to beat the shit out of me if I didn't. Smart woman. When he was done he shoved me against the wall hard enough that I bounced and told me that if I told anyone I was a dead woman.
Then he left, and I went down to an immediate care facility and told the doctor that one of my scenes had gotten too realistic.
X X X X X
"Obviously you told someone," I said.
"Yeah, and he didn't kill me," she said. Woman didn't know how lucky she was. "Still, I didn't go blabbing to the tabloids then because I didn't want to take the risk, you know? I just wanted to make sure it was out there, somewhere. In case something else happened."
"Still, after all of it, it is still your word against his, right?" Xander said. "Not saying I don't believe you, 'cause I do. But still."
"It would be," she said. "But it's not my word against his. I bought a high-end VCR with my salary from Road to Dead and I put my old one in my closet. It was only a couple of months ago and I was getting ready to toss it out when I noticed that there was still a tape in it."
"The one that was actually recording that day," I said.
"Yes," she said. "I don't know how much it got, but whatever's in there is yours."
X X X X X
Later that evening, with Dad working, Xander and I watched the tape on our home VCR. When we were done he looked at me and said, "We got something?"
I looked back. "We got something."