Veronica Mars (31 page)

Lianne was being questioned in a different interrogation room even now, a few doors down; Veronica had no desire to listen in on that session.

“So you wrote both ransom notes?”

“Shep did. He’s the one with the technical savvy. Knows how to encrypt things, knows how to mask an IP address, all that stuff. He thought we might get lucky and get the ransom for Hayley Dewalt too, but then that girl found the body.”

Veronica smiled a little. She’d gone from being “Veronica, honey” to “that girl” in a matter of hours. All things considered, she preferred the latter. At least from Tanner Scott.

“So today when Adrian Marks came forward with his story, you decided to move. You jogged to the Grand with one of your son’s maracas, waited for Shepherd to leave the hotel, assaulted him, and took the money.”

“No!” Tanner slammed his fist on the table. “No, I didn’t. I wasn’t anywhere near the hotel. I was checking in on Rory. Room twenty-four in the Pinehurst Lodge, like I’ve been saying for two hours. Check it if you don’t believe me!”

“We did check it.”

A look of surprise flashed across Tanner’s face, too quick for him to hide it. “So? What’d she say?”

Lamb’s chest swelled up, and Veronica could only guess how much he was loving this part—the trap sprung, the cat catching the canary. He’d taken the loss of Willie Murphy hard. But here he had a nice, juicy replacement for his trouble, a swindler who preyed upon the fears of anyone who’d ever seen a picture of a missing girl and imagined his or her own daughter in her place.

“Mr. Scott, no one at the Pinehurst has ever laid eyes on your daughter. Room twenty-four has been vacant for a week. There’s no evidence she was ever anywhere near that motel.”

Tanner shook his head, his jaw tight. “That’s not right. I just saw her there. Three hours ago, I just saw her there!”

“So on top of everything else, I’m starting to have a strong inclination to charge you not just in the assault of Duane Shepherd but also for the murder of Aurora Scott.”

“Lamb, get real.” Cliff broke in for the first time in a while. “You don’t have anything to indicate that Aurora Scott has been murdered—particularly not by my client.”

“Not yet,” Lamb said, a leering grin spreading across his face. “But until I start getting more satisfied about some of these answers, it’s definitely a possibility.”

“We’ve been searching the areas around the condo and around the Camelot,” Norris whispered. “I can’t figure out where he would have put the cash. I mean, look at him, he doesn’t even have pockets on his shorts. He had to hide it somewhere, right?”

For a second, Veronica felt everything stop. The sound of the station, the beating of her heart, the blood in her veins. The earth tilting and swaying. It all went still. Flashes went off in her brain, brilliant and blinding. She closed her eyes. She could feel a smile, incongruous and strange, spreading over her face.

“You won’t find that money hidden around the condo. Or the Neptune Grand,” Veronica said.

She opened her eyes. Norris was staring at her expectantly.

“How do you know that?”

“Give me an hour and I’ll explain everything.” She adjusted her purse strap on her shoulder. “Thanks, Norris. I’ve gotta go.”

She was halfway down the hall when she heard Norris calling after her. “Be careful, Veronica!” Veronica held up her hand in acknowledgment and rounded the corner to the exit.

Adrian Marks lived in a shoddy apartment complex a few blocks from the wide green swaths of Hearst College. When Veronica arrived it was almost eleven. The pool was packed with kids—Hearst was back in session, but it looked like the residents were trying to stretch the party out a little longer. Coolers of beer lined the sides of the pool, and a few empty bottles bobbed like ducks on the water’s surface.

Adrian’s unit was on the top floor. There was a light in the window, bands of yellow peeking out past the closed blinds. She pressed her ear to the door but she couldn’t hear anything over the thump of the music at the pool below. Then she knocked.

The light in the window shifted as someone moved through it. It seemed to take a few minutes. She stood a few extra inches back from the door. She was so short people often had a hard time seeing her through the peephole.

After what felt like a beat too long, the door swung open. Adrian stood silhouetted in the doorway. He wore an inside-out T-shirt and a pair of plaid boxer shorts, his dark hair tousled over one eye. It was the most undressed she’d seen him since she’d met him the week before—he usually gave
the impression of being carefully put together, even when he was just wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

“I didn’t wake you up, did I?” Veronica’s voice was apologetic. “I know it’s late.”

Adrian rubbed the back of his neck. He gave an awkward smile.

“I wasn’t asleep yet. Just getting settled in. It’s actually early for me, but it was a royal
nightmare
of a day.” He held up his hands, palms out in a gesture of exasperation.

“Yeah, I heard you had to make a statement. That must have been tough.”

He shuddered. “I never want to have to go through anything like it again.”

Veronica smiled sympathetically.

“The thing is, I have a few more questions about Aurora. I was hoping you could help clarify a few things for me.”

Adrian glanced behind him into the apartment. “It can’t wait for tomorrow? I really was just on my way to bed.”

“It’ll only take a moment.” She paused. “I just want to make sure Aurora’s all right.”

Behind her she heard a shriek and then a splash from the pool. After another few seconds, Adrian swung open the door to let her in.

The cramped little apartment was a catastrophe. Dirty dishes and empty pizza boxes cascaded across the floor. An overflowing ashtray sat on top of a statistics book, next to a cluster of beer bottles. One of the lightbulbs in the kitchen was out, giving the place a yellowed and dingy look. A smell of unwashed socks mingled with the smell of sour, turning food. Beneath it she could just make out a whiff of something sweeter, like the ghost of a vanilla candle.

“So you said you had questions?” Adrian prompted.

She stuck her hands into her pockets, rocking slightly on the balls of her feet. “Did you hear what happened tonight? Mr. Jackson—you know, that kidnapping expert? Someone attacked him outside the Neptune Grand and disappeared with the ransom money.”

Adrian’s head jerked backward in a double take. “What?”

“Crazy, right?” She shifted her weight. “The sheriff brought Mr. Scott in for questioning.”

“Mr. Scott? But … why?” The boy’s brow furrowed.

“Apparently Jackson and Tanner were working together all along. Well, Jackson, Tanner, and Aurora. According to Tanner she’s been in on it too.” She watched Adrian’s face carefully. He looked confused, his eyes wide with surprise. “They decided to stage her disappearance when Hayley went missing, then created the ransom notes, hoping to cash in on both Hayley’s disappearance and Aurora’s. But when it looked like their cover was about to be blown, Jackson tried sneaking off with the money. Lamb thinks it was Tanner who assaulted him and hid the money somewhere.”

Adrian sat down hard on a lumpy easy chair. It creaked beneath him. “Oh. My.
God
.” He covered his eyes with one hand for a moment, then looked up, his eyes flashing. “I’m going to
kill
her! She let me sit here and feel like shit for covering her ass, and all this time she’s been in on everything? I can’t fucking believe her.”

Veronica sat down across from him on a sagging sofa, hands in her lap. From where she sat she could see a little way down the darkened hallway—one door was closed, another cracked slightly, too dark to see in. “So you haven’t heard from her at all tonight?”

He shook his head. “Have the cops found her yet?”

“That’s the thing.” She leaned forward. “She’s not at the motel where Tanner said she’d be. She really
is
missing this time.”

“What are you saying?”

“I don’t know.” She straightened up again. “Lamb is talking about charging Tanner with her murder, but I don’t buy it. For one thing there’s no evidence. Not that that’d stop Lamb. But for another, Tanner allegedly hit his partner over the head with a
maraca
. I don’t buy that he’d clock Lee Jackson with an amateur bludgeon if he were cold enough to off his own daughter.”

“A maraca?” Adrian asked, looking thunderstruck.

“So what I’m wondering,” she went on, as if he hadn’t spoken at all, “is if you think Aurora has it in her to double-cross her dad.”

He stared at her for a moment, his mouth hanging open.

“Because here’s the thing,” she said. “Tanner may be sketchy, but he seems like a pretty smart guy. So why would he take his child’s musical instrument—which I’d just seen him handling a few hours earlier—and use it to assault someone?” She grimaced. “Besides which, where the hell was he keeping it? He was out jogging. I saw his clothes—mesh shorts, T-shirt, no pockets. So did he just jog down to the Grand with the maraca clenched in his fist, then jog off with the duffel of money? I doubt it. But if Tanner didn’t do it—and I don’t think he did—that means that whoever did do it worked really hard to pin it on him. The only person in the scam who’s unaccounted for is Aurora. And if I’ve learned anything about Aurora in the past week, it’s that she’s clever, she’s ambitious, and she’s a damn good liar.”

Adrian ran his fingers through his hair. He was quiet for a minute, staring blankly up at the ceiling. When he looked back down, his blue eyes were conflicted.

“I don’t know anymore. I mean, a few hours ago, I would have told you no way—that Rory wouldn’t do something like that to her own dad. But … she’s been lying to me all this time. She’s been lying to everyone. So I don’t know what to think. I’m sorry, I wish I could help you.”

She stood up. “It’s all right, Adrian. This has got to come as a real shock to you.” She smiled and held out her hand. They shook. “Look, give me a call if you hear from her, okay? I just want to know she’s safe.”

“I will,” he promised.

She turned to go but paused near the dark hallway. It was now or never.

“Mind if I use your bathroom before I go?”

Before he could answer, she pushed open the closed door—the one she’d pegged as the bedroom. Immediately a wave of that sweet vanilla smell came wafting out through the open door.

Then a white-hot ripple of pain unfurled in her chest, spreading out through her body. Her muscles seized up. She felt herself falling and she couldn’t move—couldn’t even put out her hands to brace her fall.

In the moment before she hit the carpet, she just had time to make out the freckled face and straight auburn hair of her attacker, a Taser crackling in her hand.

Hello, Aurora
.

“Shit! Shit! What are we going to do?”

“Shut up. Just shut up and let me think for a second.”

Veronica found herself on her back, staring across a grimy, khaki-colored carpet at a landscape of dust bunnies and beer caps. She couldn’t move to turn her head from where it was crooked to the left, but from where she lay she could make out a bed with a rumpled quilt spilling half on the floor, a single desk lamp casting yellow light around the bedside table. There were dirty clothes all over the room, and just a few feet away, a blue nylon duffel bag slumped on the floor.

That vanilla perfume grew stronger, and she felt warm breath on her cheek. Pain ricocheted through her body as Aurora shocked her again, her nerves screaming. She felt her legs flop against the floor like dying fish, wondering distantly if this was some horrible kind of karma for all the people she’d tased over the years. Then she fell still.

“Hand me her purse,” Aurora demanded. “We have to make sure she’s not armed.”

There was a rustling noise near Veronica’s ear as Aurora rifled through Veronica’s bag and pulled out her Taser. “Hold
on to that. We definitely don’t want to be on the receiving end of this thing.”

They had Veronica’s Taser. Her mouth was dry. She could already feel the pins and needles of sensation returning to her limbs, but before she could move she felt something pressing into her legs.

“We need to get her tied up before the shock wears off.”

“Yeah, but what then? She’s seen you, Rory—what the fuck are we going to do with her?” Adrian’s voice suddenly seemed to have dropped about two octaves in the last few seconds.

“Baby, I love you, but you are not helping.” Aurora’s voice was a tight, controlled hiss. “Use your exercise bands and
tie her up
.”

There was some scuffling behind her. Veronica wiggled her toes, testing her movement. Suddenly Aurora was in front of her, cocking her head to one side to meet Veronica’s eyes. She was in a black bra and panties, her hair loose around her shoulders. Her mascara was smeared beneath her eyes. She held the stun gun in her right hand.

“You wouldn’t believe how much I’ve heard about you,” she said. Her voice was tense and excited. “Clever, good Veronica Mars, the daughter so decent and upstanding Lianne couldn’t even look her in the eye. It’s fucking pathetic. She never had that problem with me.” Aurora gave a short, harsh laugh.

“It takes a con to know a con, I guess,” Veronica rasped. Her throat was dry, and her muscles were bunched in tense, vicious knots. She groaned, her voice weak and shaky, as Adrian appeared and tugged her arms roughly away from her body. He wound something cool and tight around her wrists. Almost instinctively she pulled her hands slightly
apart, hoping against hope that it would help her generate slack in the bindings.

Aurora seemed to be enjoying her discomfort. “So it was Adrian who attacked Duane Shepherd with the maraca and left those beans there for me to find?”

“I knew that doorknob of a sheriff wouldn’t put it together, but I thought you might.” She started to pace, her bare feet padding back and forth across the carpet. “I never liked Shep. He liked to think he was in charge of the whole operation. Kind of a bummer that I didn’t get to smack him myself.” She paused, looking behind Veronica at Adrian. “You get it good and tight? Get her legs too.”