Veronica Mars (14 page)

“Please,” said the woman, her voice faltering in the microphone. “Please, if you’re watching this. All I want is to see my daughter again.” She dissolved into tears, her hand fluttering up to rest on her mouth.

Veronica knew that voice as well as she knew her own. She still heard it sometimes, in her dreams.

It was Lianne Mars, her mother.

Lianne and her new husband were staying at a condo on the bluffs overlooking Neptune, nestled among the pines and palms on the hillside. Any cheaper accommodations were booked—the vacancies left by balking spring breakers were being snatched up by incoming reporters, cameramen, and producers as quick as they opened up. Petra Landros had put the Scotts in the modern marble and glass temple of the Apollo Heights Townhomes, courtesy of the Neptune Chamber of Commerce.

Veronica’s mind was a staticky blank as she rang the doorbell to their unit. Sunlight wove through the trees, leaving dappled patterns across the beds of river stones and succulents lining the front walk. The birds chattered cacophonously overhead. Veronica noticed everything as if the information came from far away as she waited for her mom—or her new husband—to come to the door.

Landros had given her a quick spiel over the phone. Lianne and her husband, Tanner, lived in Tucson, Arizona. Tanner worked at the Home Depot. Lianne was a part-time receptionist in a dentist’s office. They’d flown out that morning, as soon as they’d gotten the news. They were, of course, devastated.

Veronica didn’t mention her connection to Lianne. She
probably should have; she now officially had a conflict of interest. Or, at least, she would if she had any intention of letting her feelings get in the way of solving the case. But she didn’t. And given how she and Lianne had left things all those years ago, it all seemed too awkward, too personal to try to explain to Petra Landros.
So the client is my mother, but at this point it’s more an honorary title than anything, as I haven’t seen her in more than a decade. No big deal
.

Veronica gave a small start as the door latch scraped open. In the entryway stood a small boy with sandy blond hair. He was about six years old, in a Batman T-shirt and short pants. He had child-size bongos strapped across his chest.

He squinted up at her. “You don’t look like the police.”

She knelt down to his level. All at once the distant feeling disappeared, and she was terribly, intensely present. She looked into the boy’s eyes. They were light brown, big in his small, serious face.

“Neither do you,” she said, narrowing her eyes in mock suspicion. He didn’t smile.

“The police are stupid. I’m Batman.” With that he beat a little tattoo on his drums and ran back into the condo. “Mom! Someone’s here!”

Mom
. She watched the back of his head, getting slowly to her feet. Her skin prickled with adrenaline.
He called her Mom
.

For a moment she lingered on the threshold. Then she stepped through the door. A moment later, Lianne Mars—Lianne
Scott
—came in from the other room.

It’d been eleven years since she’d seen her mother. Eleven years since Veronica had looked Lianne in the face and told her to leave. Veronica had been seventeen years old, and it
was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. But Lianne couldn’t be trusted. All her best intentions—her love, her kindness, her good humor—had long since been drowned in the bottom of a bottle.

Now Lianne stood in the doorway, staring at her daughter. Her mouth was open, as if she’d been about to speak but had forgotten what to say.

The idea of saying anything at all was absurd. After such a long silence, after all that had happened in the long years between them—it was unthinkable. But they couldn’t stand in the entryway forever. Veronica gave her mother an awkward smile.

“Hi, Mom.”

Lianne shut her mouth. She took a few steps forward. Veronica realized that she was moving for a hug and took an instinctive step back. Lianne stopped in her tracks, her arms suddenly limp at her sides.

From the other room came a syncopated drumbeat, tapped haphazardly on the bongos.

Veronica cleared her throat. “Petra Landros sent me. I’m here to help you find Aurora.”

Lianne laughed. It was a strange, shrill sound, like something breaking in her throat. “Of course. Of course you are. Of course it’d be you.” She turned away. “Come in.”

Veronica followed her mother into a plush, high-ceilinged room, where a sleek Danish living room set was arranged around a fireplace. Most of one wall was taken up by windows; outside, a wide balcony looked out over the Neptune skyline. The little boy sat on a thick-napped rug, still pounding on his bongo.

“Can I … can I get you anything?” Lianne’s eyes kept
darting toward her and then away just as quickly. “Water? Coffee?”

“No, thank you.”
She’s just another client
, Veronica told herself.
Just another scared parent who’s lost a child
. That thought made her want to laugh out loud, even as a humorless and hollow feeling opened like a chasm inside her.

Veronica stood awkwardly near a chair, waiting for the invitation to sit. Lianne squeezed her hands together like she was hoping to wring some comfort from them. She stared down at the little boy.

“Hunter, sweetheart. Can you go to your room and play alone for a little while? I need to talk to … to this lady.”

Hunter stood up, picking up the bongos. He gave Veronica a long, inscrutable look. “Are you going to find Rory?”

“Rory?” She realized a beat too late that that must be Aurora’s nickname. She sat down on the long edge of an L-shaped couch, just in front of him. “I’ll do my very best.”

A small crease formed between his eyes. He glanced up at Lianne, who watched fretfully from a few feet away.

“Mom, can’t I stay?”

Lianne closed her eyes for a moment. “Please, sweetheart, do what I’ve asked. We just need a little privacy.”

His little mouth turned down. He stood up and grabbed the end of his bongo drums, dragging them behind him as noisily as he could. He disappeared into the hallway, and a few minutes later the sound of a slamming door reverberated toward them.

Lianne slowly sank into a seat several feet away from Veronica. She stared down at her lap. “You must have questions—”

“We don’t have to—” Veronica spoke at the same time,
her voice overlapping with her mother’s. She pressed her lips tightly together in a rueful smile. “It’s okay. I’m here to do a job. To help you find Aurora. You don’t owe me any answers.”

“I’ve been clean for seven years now. Seven years, three months, twelve days.” It was like Lianne hadn’t even heard. “Tanner and I met in recovery. He’s Rory’s dad. Hunter’s dad too. I guess that’s obvious. I’m sorry, I’m just … I’m nervous.” She took a deep breath, and when she spoke her voice was calmer. Her eyes settled on Veronica’s face. She looked almost frightened, her pupils wide and dark. “Hunter … Hunter’s your little brother.”

“Yeah,” Veronica said softly. “I got that.” She looked away, a strange knot twisting in her chest. She felt lost, disoriented—as if all the world’s coordinates had suddenly rearranged themselves and she didn’t have a compass. Anger had been her default for so long with her mother. And if it were just Lianne, she could have rallied that anger. She could have stoked it to protect herself, to keep her mother at arm’s length. But a brother? She didn’t know what to do with that.

“What is he, five? Six?” Veronica’s voice was so soft it was almost swallowed by the enormous room. Lianne nodded.

“He’s six.” She smiled weakly. “He doesn’t know about you. I … I’ve always wanted to tell him. But it’s difficult to explain.”

Veronica wondered if the little boy was in his room with his ear pressed to the door. She remembered being six. Keeping half an eye on the levels in the bottle, understanding even then that there was some mysterious relationship between that and her mother’s behavior. Sometimes it’d
been better than that—sometimes it’d been good. But that only made the bad times so much worse.

“Right now, with so much going on, I don’t want to … to confuse him. He’s already terrified. He loves Rory.” Tears spilled down her cheek. She didn’t try to wipe them away.

“It’s fine, Mom.”
There’s no reason to change anything
, Veronica told herself.
I don’t want you back in my life. I don’t want your drama, your manipulations, your lies. I don’t need you. I don’t need this little kid whom I’ve never even met
. “We don’t need to complicate things right now. We just need to focus on bringing Rory home.”

Lianne nodded, chewing on the ragged edge of a nail. Her lips trembled slightly. She took a deep breath, her eyes settling on Veronica’s. “When Ms. Landros said she was sending in a PI, I did … I had a moment where I wondered if it’d be your dad. I never thought it’d be you.”

Veronica was spared having to answer by the sound of someone coming in the front door. Lianne shot to her feet. Veronica relaxed slightly—they wouldn’t be
alone
together anymore. No more memory lane. No more risk of ripping open ancient wounds. A moment later, two men entered the room.

One was the lanky man Veronica had seen on TV hours earlier. Aurora’s dad, Tanner Scott. He wore a denim jacket fraying at the wrists and carried two small white sacks that smelled of grease and salt. Behind him came a broad-shouldered boy in a gray cardigan and skinny jeans. He was maybe eighteen or nineteen, clean shaven and pale. He balanced a tray of fountain drinks in his hand. Something about him looked vaguely familiar to Veronica.

“We got lunch!” The first man held up the sacks. His eyes fell on Veronica.

“This is my husband, Tanner,” Lianne said. “Tanner, this … this is Veronica. She’s the PI Petra hired to help us find Aurora.”

Tanner’s pale blue eyes widened, and he did a double take, looking Veronica up and down. A sad, strained smile spread over his face. “Veronica, honey, I’ve heard so much about you over the years. It’s great to finally meet you.” His voice had a clipped Midwestern twang, the vowels hammered flat. Before she could do anything, he’d wrapped her in a quick, surprisingly strong hug, takeout bags still clutched in his hands. Veronica stood stiff and awkward in his embrace. When he let go, she stepped discreetly away.

“And this is Adrian Marks,” Lianne said quickly, gesturing to the teenaged boy. “He’s Rory’s best friend; he practically lived at our house last year. He was with her the night she disappeared.”

All at once, Veronica realized where she’d seen him. He’d been at the party—she’d seen him playing Lady Gaga on the grand piano. He nodded at her now. His mouth was small and sullen, his eyes dark and wounded. She felt a rush of sympathy—he had the same lost look she’d seen on Hayley Dewalt’s friends. That same sense of some vital, careless, innocent thing ruined.

Paradise doesn’t just get lost in Neptune. It gets razed to the ground
.

Tanner set the food on the kitchen counter. “Do you mind us eating while we talk? I don’t want the burgers to get cold.”

“Not at all.”

They took a few minutes, digging through the bags, opening the foil-wrapped burgers, and sorting out whose was whose. Lianne took a tray to Hunter in his bedroom. By the
time she returned the others had gathered around a table topped with sea-green glass, burgers unwrapped, fries jutting from cardboard containers. There was extra food; Tanner had offered a burger to Veronica, but her stomach turned at the thought. She pulled out her notebook and a pen.

“Can you tell me a little about Aurora?” Veronica asked. “Her interests, her personality?”

Tanner stood halfway up so he could get his phone out of his pocket. He opened his picture albums app and handed the phone to Veronica.

“I made an album, to show the cops or the press or whoever,” he said.

There were two or three dozen photos—the first was dated 2006, when Aurora would have been eight. Veronica started scrolling through.

The pictures showed first a whip-thin, wild-haired little girl. At eight, nine, ten, Aurora Scott had a coltish look, all hard angles and tensed muscles, like at any moment she was seconds from bolting.
A kid who ran and played
, she thought, looking at the skinned knee below a pair of shorts, the dirty arms and legs. She couldn’t even hold still for Lianne and Tanner’s wedding pictures—in almost every shot she was looking away from the camera or fidgeting with the bow in her hair, her flower-girl basket half crushed in one hand.

The girl grew up before Veronica’s eyes. There were pictures of her in the Arizona desert, standing next to towering saguaro cacti. Pictures of her holding a two-year-old Hunter in her lap in front of a Christmas tree. One caught her in midair as she leapt from a diving board at the pool, arms and legs akimbo. In junior high she went through a lightning-quick girly phase—sequins and short skirts, bubblegum-pink
lip gloss and long wavy hair. That look disappeared abruptly between snapshots, replaced with knit caps and baggy layers. Skater chic.

“She’s spirited,” Lianne said softly. “Funny, smart.” Adrian nodded his agreement.

The last handful of photos—the ones taken in the past year—showed a girl with the casual, hard-edged style of a tomboy grown up to be beautiful. Black leather jacket, distressed jeans, stretched-out sweaters hanging off one shoulder. Her auburn hair was long and straight, and her eyes were green, catlike, and rimmed with black liner. She smirked and pouted, never quite smiling for the camera.

Veronica’s chest tightened. Something in the tilt of the girl’s head, the arch of her eyebrow, made Veronica think of Lilly Kane—brazen, fearless. And something else, maybe just a certain sharpness in Aurora’s eyes, reminded her of herself. Sixteen, with a hair-trigger bullshit detector. Sixteen and looking for a fight.

She looked up at Lianne and Tanner. “Did you know Aurora was planning to come to Neptune for spring break?”

Tanner and Lianne exchanged glances.

“We did,” Tanner said. “We drove her to the bus station. She came out to visit Adrian. We were nervous about letting her come, of course, but she really wanted to.”