Veronica Mars (30 page)

Lianne sat down hard in one of the armchairs near the fire. “You mean we hired a … a fake?”

Veronica shook her head. “No, Mom. I don’t think so.” She put both her hands on the winged back of a chair and
leaned forward. “I don’t think Tanner was taken in by some smooth-talking con man. I think Tanner’s working with the guy.”

Lianne gave a hot, forced laugh. “You’re joking, right?”

“I wish I were.”

“If Tanner was working with this guy, why would he steal the money from him?”

Veronica gave Lianne a pitying look. “You know as well as I do there’s no honor among thieves. I’m guessing Tanner decided that one hundred percent of the money was preferable to half. Maybe Lee Jackson just outlived his usefulness. Maybe Tanner was planning this the whole time. Either way, I don’t think he’s coming back.”

Her mother’s lips tugged downward, a sudden angry sneer. “Where’s your evidence, Veronica?”

“Mom, think about it for just a second. Tanner said he called Jackson, right? It wasn’t like Jackson cold-called him when news of Aurora’s disappearance hit.”

“I don’t really remember how it all happened,” Lianne said, stubborn. Veronica exhaled through closed teeth, fighting to keep her patience.

“Yes, you do. Because the Dewalts had already hired Miles Oxman, and they talked to you about consolidating the investigations and using Oxman for both ransom drops. But Tanner was adamant that he’d heard about this guy Jackson, that he’d already called to hire him. Well, if Tanner had placed the call to Meridian, he would have gotten the real Jackson. The only way this makes sense is if he’s in on it.”

Suddenly Lianne was on her feet again. “Here’s what I think. I think you just can’t stand the idea that I’ve gotten
my life back on track, Veronica. I think you can’t stand the idea that I might be happy. You’re just hoping to find out I’ve made as big a mess of this marriage as I made of the last one, so you can be right about me. You want to be able to punish me.” Her voice shook, but her eyes flashed with anger. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do better for you. I’m sorry for it every day. But you can’t do this to me. You can’t just come in here and try to tell me my family is a sham.”

For the span of a breath, Veronica’s vision went bloody. She could barely see Lianne through the brilliant red. Then she blinked. Lianne’s shoulders were back, her arms clenched close to her body, like she was ready to take a swing.

So like Lianne, to make this a story about poor little her. To make everything she’d done to Veronica and Keith into another way to feel sorry for herself.

So like Lianne too to somehow make Veronica half believe the accusation. That was a drunk’s best trick, after all—spread the blame around, let everyone take part in the dysfunction. But didn’t Lianne deserve to be punished, just a little? It wasn’t fair that she could just decide to move on, easy as that. It wasn’t fair that she could build a new life, one where she didn’t have to live with what she’d done to Veronica and her father. So maybe some part of Veronica did want to believe Tanner was a crook.

But just because she wanted to believe it didn’t make it a delusion.

“I’m not trying to hurt you,” she said, fighting to control her voice. “I’m trying to warn you. If you want to keep living in denial, fine by me. It won’t be the first time.”

She grabbed her purse from where she’d set it down. Then she stopped and turned to face her mother.

“When Tanner doesn’t come back tonight—because trust me, he won’t—don’t bother calling me. Call the sheriff. I’m sure by that time he’ll have figured out who the guy with the head injury really is, and he might be very interested to know Tanner and the money both vanished at once.”

She spun on her heel, ready to charge toward the door. Then, suddenly, she heard someone come in. She froze in her tracks, her stomach lurching.

Tanner, in nylon shorts and a tank top, came into the room, sweat glistening on the surface of his skin.

“Veronica,” he said in surprise, looking up at her as he untied his shoes. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“What … I …” She stared at him, agape, her thoughts swimming. Out of the corner of her eye, she sensed Lianne’s attention sharpen. For a moment she expected her mother to say something to her, maybe to kick her out. Maybe just to laugh in her face. But instead, Lianne strode across the cavernous living room and stood inches from Tanner. She stood over him by almost two inches, even in her socked feet.

“What the hell is going on, Tanner?” Her tone was more baffled than anything. “Lee Jackson just got attacked in the parking lot of the Grand. Veronica thinks—”

“Lee got attacked?”

Either Tanner Scott was a world-class actor or Veronica was wrong. A look first of confusion, then of dawning horror, crept over his face. He turned to look at Veronica. “Who attacked him?”

“We don’t know yet,” Veronica said carefully. She watched him closely as she spoke. “Someone clubbed him from behind. He’s alive, but he’s in bad shape.”

“And the ransom money’s gone,” Lianne added.

Tanner’s eyes bulged slightly, twitching wildly this way and that. “Oh my god.”

“I’m just glad you’re back.” Tears were starting to pour down Lianne’s face. “I’m just so glad you’re back.”

Veronica was about to speak when she heard a soft noise from the hallway to the bedrooms. Hunter, his sandy blond hair sticking up in tufts, came shuffling into the room, pausing just inside the doorway. He wore pajamas with robots printed all over them, and his feet were bare.

“What’s going on? Why’s everyone yelling?”

Lianne went to scoop him into her arms, while Tanner lowered himself, still looking shocked, into a chair. Veronica stood still, her thoughts racing, her limbs strangely heavy.

Distantly, she heard her text chime on her phone. She pulled it out of her pocket and glanced down at the screen. It was from Mac.

It was when she looked up from her phone that she saw it. Tanner sat, rubbing his hands against his knees, staring nervously toward the fire. Lianne stood in the doorway holding Hunter close, tears pouring down her face. And there, where it’d rolled beneath the coffee table, sat a single maraca, painted in brilliant red and green.

In one fluid movement, she crossed the room and picked it up from where it lay. It rattled in her hand, heavier than she would have expected, the wood thick and quite hard.
She raised it high over her head and brought it down against the edge of the hearth.

With a satisfying crack, the instrument crumpled against the stone. And pinto beans—small, dry, innocuous—spilled out all over the immaculate carpet.

The very same ones that had spilled out beneath Lee Jackson’s body at the Neptune Grand.

“Look, for the thousandth time, I didn’t attack Shep.”

It was late Tuesday night, and Veronica watched Tanner’s interrogation unfold through a one-way mirror. Lamb hadn’t wanted her there—he’d been ready to throw her in the lockup for obstruction, never mind that she hand delivered the perp in question. She’d had to call Petra Landros and remind her that $600,000 was still missing—$600,000 that had been raised in part by Neptune’s Chamber of Commerce. “Do you think Lamb’s capable of tracking it down?” Veronica had asked.

Within twenty minutes a hulking, concrete-faced deputy was showing her where she could hang her coat. She assumed Petra had put in a call to Lamb to remind him that his campaign funds and endorsements were on the line.
Well, whatever works
. She just wanted to hear what Tanner Scott had to say for himself.

Tanner Scott sat across from Lamb, his forearms flat on the table. Next to him, Cliff McCormack jotted notes onto a legal pad.

“Fine, yes, we were
working
together.” Tanner’s flat Midwestern drawl was a shade higher than usual. He was nervous. “I mean, I was working
for
him. This whole thing was
his idea. I’ve been out of the game for a long time, living clean and legitimate. But then along come Shep …”

“That’s Duane Shepherd? The victim?”

“Yeah. He tracked me down in Tucson. I hadn’t seen him in eight years. We used to be partners.”

At this point Cliff leaned over and whispered something to Tanner, but he shook his head.

“No, look, I’ll come clean to anything I’m actually responsible for. But I swear to God, I wasn’t anywhere near that hotel tonight. I didn’t have anything to do with that maraca.”

He pronounced “maraca” with a short “a” on the second syllable, like “rack.”

“We used to hustle a little bit, back before I stopped drinking. I got busted nine years ago and served my time. It scared me straight. I got sober, I settled down. By the time I got out of prison, Shep had landed himself in. After that we lost touch. I didn’t see him again until last week.”

Veronica had already been on and off the phone with Mac for most the night—enough so that she could piece together the parts that Tanner wasn’t telling. She already knew about Tanner’s check fraud. Shepherd, on the other hand, had a meatier rap sheet. He’d served six months in the nineties for selling forged athletic memorabilia in Sacramento, including a football supposedly signed by “the Juice” himself in the aftermath of the O. J. Simpson trial. A few years after that he was in trouble again, this time for passing off altered lottery tickets in Denver. The last sentence, the one that had come down while Tanner was serving his time, was for identity theft and credit card fraud, a five-year stint in federal prison for maxing out dozens of accounts he’d established with stolen Social Security numbers.

The men had never been implicated in the same set of crimes, but she was willing to bet they’d worked together on and off for a long, long time. Mac had dug deep and found complaints in Reno, Fresno, and Phoenix—cases where victims had come forward claiming fraud but where nothing could be proven. Six women who claimed they’d been recruited by a “modeling firm” that had required them to pay money up front for their portfolios, only to find the firm vanished when they went back; a few socialites who claimed to have met “Denzel Washington’s charming brother” and loaned him vast amounts of money. An older couple who’d purchased a houseboat from a “little skinny guy with blue eyes,” only to find that the deed was forged. Veronica knew the statistics on swindling—most people never came forward, too ashamed of having been taken in, too ashamed of a situation where their own greed or lust or hunger had been laid bare. For every one complaint, it was worth assuming there were a half dozen other victims who’d stayed hidden in the shadows.

“He had an idea for how to make some money. I told him no, I was out. But the thing about Shep is, he can be very persuasive.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “He forced me into it.”

“How’d he force you into it?” Lamb’s voice was dripping skepticism, his left eyebrow arched over a baby-blue eye. “Did he threaten you with violence?”

“Shep has stuff on me from way back. Enough to get me put away. I mean, nothing violent,” he said quickly. “Some scams we ran back in the day that are still technically, uh, unsolved. He threatened to turn me in. I never meant to hurt anyone. I swear.”

“You believe him?”

Veronica looked up. Norris Clayton had sidled up next to her, holding two cups of coffee. He handed one to Veronica.

“About being blackmailed by Shepherd? I’ll give it a fifty-fifty. It’s possible—but Tanner’s an established liar, and Shepherd isn’t exactly in a position to argue.”

“Oh, you didn’t hear?” Norris grinned humorlessly. “Shepherd disappeared from his hospital bed about an hour ago. No one’s sure how he managed it—but he’s vapor.”

Veronica turned to stare at him, but she didn’t have time to speak. Lamb was still grilling Tanner Scott. She shook her head and turned back to the window.

“Okay, okay. So what was Mr. Shepherd’s plan? Walk me through it like I’m stupid,” Lamb said.

Norris snorted softly, and Veronica’s esteem for the man rose dramatically.

“Well, he’d seen how much money was flooding into that Hayley Dewalt website. I mean, by noon on the first day it hit a hundred thousand. It was unbelievable. So he thought it’d be pretty easy to get in on that. All Aurora had to do was make sure to be seen at the same party the first girl went missing from, and then hole up for a few weeks while the money rolled in. Then we’d do the ransom drop, and a few days later she could stagger into a gas station, dirty and a little worse for wear. Shep would get the money out of town, and we’d meet up later and split it.”

Lamb was staring at him now with unmasked skepticism. “Wait, wait. You’re saying your sixteen-year-old daughter was in on this?”

Tanner hesitated, then nodded.

The sheriff leaned back in his seat, arms crossed over
his chest. “Look, we have this other kid—Adrian Marks—saying she ran off with some guy. I gotta tell you, that’s more plausible to me than the idea of a teenaged girl staying holed up during spring break.”

“How many teen girls you know, Sheriff?”

Lamb didn’t crack a smile. Tanner sighed.

“Well, that’s how the whole thing fell apart. Damn girl told that friend of hers she was running off with a boy so he wouldn’t worry about her when she went missing. She was trying to be kind, I guess, but it was an amateur mistake.” Tanner erupted in a hoarse laugh. “I thought I taught her better.”

“Mr. Scott, forgive me, but I don’t see how it’s funny to use a minor as an accessory to fraud, theft, obstruction of justice, and tampering with evidence.”

Tanner sobered at once. “Look, don’t be hard on the kid. She didn’t want any part of this, either—but when she found out what Shep was threatening, she was scared. Last time I went to jail she was stuck in foster care for a year and a half. It wasn’t a day at the fucking beach. She’s terrified of losing me again.”

“And what about your wife and your son? Did they know what was going on?”

A strange look flitted across Tanner’s face. Veronica couldn’t decide if it was regret or relief.

“No. They didn’t. They don’t.”

Which meant, if it was true, that he’d been planning to leave her mom high and dry. The ticket to Bermuda spoke volumes about how he’d planned to end the heist: on a beach, with a daiquiri in hand and no straight-and-narrow wife or noisy six-year-old in sight.