Veronica Mars (11 page)

“I need you guys to hit the pavement for me. Put these up on lampposts, hand them out on the boardwalk, see if you can get them in shop windows. Especially in places where there are lots of spring breakers.”

They both took stacks of flyers from her, their eyes darting over the pictures. They exchanged glances, and then T.J. looked up with an earnest and helpful expression on his face.

“Do you need us to interview people too? We can ask around, see if anyone wants to talk to us. You know, on the beach?”

Veronica gave him a piercing look before she answered. “You have my permission to talk to any bikini babe you want, as long as you get the flyers circulating.”

“And as long as you are perfect gentlemen who do not make your coach or your team look bad,” interjected Wallace pointedly. “Because your next not-detention isn’t going to be this easy. Got it?”

T.J. looked insulted. “Hey, I don’t need lessons on how to respect the ladies. I respect
all
the ladies. Skinny ones, medium ones—”

“Boys.” Veronica clapped her hands. “Let’s focus here. I need these to get out as quickly as possible. As an added incentive, if I
do
find Hayley, I’ll give you a hundred bucks.”

Both boys looked suddenly alert.

“Each?” asked T.J.

“Each,” said Veronica. “So make sure you get these flyers posted in as many places as you can. This will only work if they get seen.”

T.J. and Quinton turned to each other, strategizing in low voices—deciding where they could get the most flyers seen by the most people, versus where the hottest and least-dressed girls hung out. It seemed to be mostly T.J. doing the strategizing, with Quinton muttering “Yeah, yeah” every few seconds. Veronica turned to Wallace.

“Thanks,” she said, handing him another pile. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“Can’t say I planned to spend my spring break supervising teenagers,” he said under his breath. “You owe me, Mars.”

“Just add it to my tab.”

He grinned. “So what are you guys doing tonight? Want to go get a few beers?”

“Tempting,” Mac said. “But I thought I’d stab my eyes out with a spoon instead.”

“Come on, it’s not nearly as crazy out there as it was last year.” He looked from her to Veronica. “If I’m going to be wrangling these kids all day, I’m going to need a little R and R, you know what I mean?”

An idea suddenly came to Veronica. A slow, thoughtful smile spread over her face. Wallace’s eyes widened, and he leaned back a little.

“It scares me when you smile like that.”

“Scares you? Wallace, come on. Don’t you trust me?”

“Are you looking for the honest answer or the one where we stay on speaking terms?”

“All right, fine.” She lifted up her hands in mock surrender. “I thought you were looking for some R and R, but if you don’t want an invite to the party of the season, I can’t make you go with me.”

He gave her a wary look. “Party of the season?”

“Party of the century, if the stories are to be believed.”

“Uh-huh. Veronica Mars, social butterfly? No one’s buying it. So what’s the catch?”

“No catch.” She looped her arm through his. “But if we’re lucky, we may just score some information on what happened to Hayley Dewalt.”

Manzanita Drive was a winding road that ran parallel to Neptune’s northern coastline, surrounded on both sides by the dense foliage that cloaked the hideaways of the superrich. A lot of the houses were vacation homes for movie stars, diplomats, and CEOs, though a few were permanently occupied—Logan’s friend Dick Casablancas lived on the Drive, in a Cape Cod overlooking the Pacific.

Veronica had passed his gates earlier that night, when she’d gone to check out the house Hayley’s friends had told her about. They’d said there were theme parties there every night, and from the aloha shirts and flower leis she saw as she drove by the crowd of waiting guests, it looked like tonight was a tiki party.

She’d run home after, hoping against hope there was something trashy and tropical at the back of her closet. When she emerged an hour later, she was wearing a skintight red sarong dress, purchased more than a decade earlier for the pep squad’s annual luau-themed fund-raiser. She’d curled her hair in bouncy Marilyn ringlets and, as an afterthought, picked one of her dad’s plumeria blossoms and pinned it behind her ear. When her father caught sight of her he did a double take.

“Hot date at the Tonga Room, dear?” Keith sat on the sofa, a battered paperback copy of
Get Shorty
in one hand. Veronica kissed him on the forehead.

“Don’t wait up,” she said, looping her arm through the straw tote bag she’d traded for her studded leather purse, then leaving to pick up Wallace.

Now they were waiting in the house’s gated driveway behind a RAV4 full of college kids. Beyond the gate, through a copse of palm trees, she could make out the pulsing glow of a mansion. Laughter, shrieks, and the steady thump of bass reverberated in the cool night air. She angled the rearview mirror toward her and reapplied her lipstick.

“Think I can pass for a coed?” she asked, blowing a red kiss at Wallace.

“Do you really want me to answer that?” He was wearing an aloha shirt that belonged to Keith, procured on a Maui vacation a few years earlier. It hung off him, two sizes too big. He caught her grinning and narrowed his eyes. “I
know
you’re just marveling that I can look this good in a Don Ho shirt.”

“Hell yeah, I am,” she said, rolling the car forward as the line moved up.

She could now see a cluster of dump-truck-size security guards standing in front of the open gate. Veronica watched as one by one the occupants of each car stepped out. One guard appraised the guests and decided if they were going in or not. If they got the nod, a second guard—or maybe just an incredibly muscular valet—would step up and take the wheel of their car while a third guard patted the guests down.

“What kind of party is this again?” Wallace stared at
the enormous security guards ahead of them, brows arched skeptically.

“That’s what we’re here to find out.”

It was all very organized for a spring break rager, which led Veronica to believe that either the parties were some kind of marketing campaign—maybe put on by a party promoter who had a special deal with Sun and Surf, Inc., or an alcohol distributor launching a new product. Or, perhaps, the owner of the mansion had some very good reason to keep security tight.

A guard waved Veronica forward, and her heart sped up as she pulled up to the gatehouse.

“Evening. Can you both get out of the car for me?” He was polite and no-nonsense.
A professional, for sure. Maybe even ex-military?

“Sure!” Her voice was immediately up a half octave from usual, with a buoyant, eager tone. She opened the car door and stepped out on her towering wedges, looking around wide-eyed. “This is so ah-MA-zing. Is this, like, a movie star’s mansion or something? Oh. My. Gosh. Tell me it’s Robert Pattinson’s, because if it is I think I might die. No, wait,
don’t
tell me.”

The guard was a hulking man with buzzed hair and a squashed-looking nose. The buttons on his aloha shirt strained to contain his bulk. If he hadn’t looked so exhausted, he might have been terrifying. His expression—long-suffering but patient—didn’t move as he listened to her prattle.

One of the guards back by the gatehouse muttered something in Spanish she couldn’t quite hear, his eyes traveling over her. The others laughed. Veronica waited, her eyes ingénue
wide. All of them were packing heat—she could see the telltale bulges of their holsters under their clothes, the way they all angled their bodies gun side away. She felt a prick of unease in the pit of her stomach. She hadn’t brought her Taser, a staple when she was on a job; after her drive-by earlier, she’d anticipated being searched. More than the thin, flimsy cotton dress that barely covered her torso, its absence made her feel strangely naked.

“So is there like some kind of cover charge? Do I have to buy a cup, or …” She trailed off, cocking her head at the guard. He was watching her with an unmoving expression, almost as if waiting out her monologue. On the other side of the car, Wallace gave her a nervous glance over the hood, his arms held stiffly out while another guard patted him down.

The two guards looked at each other. The one patting down Veronica took her keys right out of her hand and gave her a small red ticket.

“Okay, ma’am, here’s your claim ticket for the car. When you’re ready to get out of here just bring it back, we’ll get it for you.”

Veronica staggered to Wallace’s side and looped her arm through his. “Thanks so much, guys! Come on, Wallace, let’s
party
!” She let out a wild whoop, tugging him along up the drive.

He looked behind them. “Man, these guys are organized.”

Organized, and armed
. Her nerves felt white-hot and electric as they walked up the driveway. A full moon had come up over the bluffs and cast deep shadows across the lawn.

The house itself was lit like a beacon, every window
shining in the darkness. It was a sprawling modern structure of slate and glass, set right on the beach. She passed a few clusters of stray partygoers on her way to the door. A girl in a grass skirt and faux coconut-shell bikini top staggered across the lawn after her friend, yelling, “Come on, Heather, don’t be like that!” Her coconuts had gotten knocked askew, but she seemed to be too drunk to realize she was flashing half the party.

The closer they got to the house, the more kids there were, laughing and sharing bottles of tequila, or passed out under palm trees. They stopped to make sure one boy, facedown in the grass, was still breathing, then rolled him on his side and left him there.

“Another sacrifice to the party gods,” Veronica muttered.

At the porch they paused. She checked her watch. It was just after ten. “All right, time to go in. We’ll cover more ground if we split up, but let’s meet out front in, say, two hours. Text me if anything gets crazy, though, all right?”

“Sure, sure.” He watched a couple of girls in Uggs and bikinis tumble out the door, laughing hysterically. He shook his head. “You know, I remember the girls being my own age at spring break. I don’t want to be the creepy old guy. Remember Lucky Dohanic? ‘Where’s the party this weekend, guys?’ ”

“Just relax.” She smiled, straightening his collar. “Try to have a little fun. And keep your eyes peeled for anything
weird
.”

They pushed through the wide oak doors.

The entryway was a marble cavern, a crush of bared limbs and gyrating hips filling the space from wall to wall. Instantly, the mingled smell of boozy sweat and a hundred
pungent colognes assaulted Veronica’s nostrils. Girls in grass skirts and bikini tops pressed up against bare-chested boys in open aloha shirts. From the second-floor landing a DJ draped in koa bead necklaces played exotica lounge music, remixed with a heavy bass. A sudden spray of liquid flecked her exposed skin as someone popped a cork and dumped champagne over the crowd. A cheer went up.

She glanced at Wallace one last time. He shrugged, then joined in the cheering, throwing his hands over his head and pushing into the crowd.

Veronica turned and staggered toward the hallway as if drunk. She marked three surveillance cameras in the upper angles of the room, aimed down at the crowd.

Wonder if those come standard with all Sun and Surf’s rental homes, or if they’re special for this one?

The house was mind-blowingly lavish, even for Neptune. She passed through a music room painted in an eye-burning crimson. Guitars hung off the walls—Fenders and Gibsons and Yamahas, in a dozen glossy shades of wood and polymer. A muscular boy in Bermuda shorts played Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” on a gleaming grand piano. A few doors down was a billiard room, cigar smoke hovering over the red felt tables as a crowd gathered to watch a long-limbed girl in tight jeans and a lei aim her shot. Then there was a small theater where
Spring Breakers
was showing. Popcorn and empty bottles covered the floor, and beneath the sound of the movie she could make out low moans from amorous couples.

Tiki torches burned on the back terrace. A luau-style spread was laid out across several buffet tables, including a whole pig with an apple in its mouth. A short flight of stairs
led down to an infinity-edge pool, choked with naked and half-naked coeds. She watched as a boy with flapping blond dreadlocks did a cannonball into the middle of a group of girls. In the Jacuzzi, the traditional “Gone Wild” activities were already commencing. Bikini tops were strewn across the slate stones like so many dead fish.

All right, Veronica. Time to schmooze
.

She got in line for the keg and filled a red Solo cup, knowing she’d stick out without a drink. Then she staggered a few lopsided steps right into the middle of a group of kids.

“Oh my gosh, I am so sorry!” She gripped the arm of broad-shouldered guy wearing, of all things, a woman’s muumuu and a Hawaiian straw hat. He steadied her, grinning up at his friends.

“Hey, no problem. You okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, slurring a little. “I’ve had so much to drink!”

“Me too!” He lifted one fist to the sky. “Spring break!”

It was like some kind of hunting call. All over the patio people stopped to lift their plastic cups or jump as high as they could and yell “Spring break!” in response. She giggled and held up her own cup, a half second too late. “Yeah, spring break!” she shouted, leaning against the guy in the muumuu.

“So what’s your name?” he asked.

“I’m Amber.” She beamed.

The guy in the muumuu couldn’t seem to track her very well—he was almost as drunk as she was pretending to be. “Where you from, Amber?”

“I’m down from UNLV,” she chirped.

“UNLV?” he boomed. “Hey, Trang. Trang! You said you’re from UNLV, right? Do you know Amber?”

Trang, who’d done his hair in a Hawaiian Elvis pompadour and wore a crushed carnation lei, stared at her with red-veined eyes, swaying slightly on his feet. “Huh?”

“It’s such a big school,” Veronica cooed. “What’s your major, Trang?”