"You Think You Know Somebody"
A guy named Luke (Sam Huntington) is in Tijuana, exchanging an envelope from inside a piñata for something in a dumpster. He heads to a car, where he joins Troy and a hung-over Logan. Luke explains that the piñata was the cheapest souvenir he could find. The guys head for the border, where Luke grows nervous but Logan and Troy remain calm. Once they’re safely back in the U.S., the guys go to a diner. When they’re done, they discover that their transportation - Troy’s father’s car - has disappeared. Later, after they’ve waited around for awhile, Troy wonders why Luke is so anxious about the missing car, since he’s not the one who will get in trouble. Troy notes that when his parents get home in five days, he’s going to be in a lot of trouble. Veronica arrives in her car to rescue the guys; she insults Logan, who insults her back, despite the fact that she’s saving him. Back in Neptune, Logan wonders if he and Veronica are going to “play nice” from now on. “Walk in front of the car, we’ll see,” she replies. Once Logan and Luke are gone, Veronica offers to try to find Troy’s father’s car. Troy doesn’t think that she can, but he apparently doesn’t know his girlfriend very well. At Mars Investigations, Veronica works on finding the car as Wallace expresses surprise that she can find it via the Internet. He challenges her to find information on him, so she goes to a website called pryingeyez.com, where she says she can get all sorts of info, thanks to the fact that her father’s a PI. Keith arrives and Veronica asks Wallace to help her figure out what to get him for his birthday.
At home, Veronica hears an answering machine message from Ms. James (see “Meet John Smith”) and realizes that Keith has gone out to dinner with her. At a gym, Luke is harassed by a guy named Hank who wants to know where his “package” is. Luke tells him that it’s in a friend’s car and he’ll have it back by the next day. Hank gives him until 9 a.m. to get the piñata back or get beaten up. At the Mars’ apartment, Keith packs up the rest of Lianne’s things, telling Veronica that he thinks it’s time to put them in storage. Veronica brings up his date with Ms. James, but Keith doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it. Veronica tells him that she’s okay with the relationship. Veronica looks through her mother’s things, voicing over about how difficult it was for her to leave right after Lilly’s death, and finds the key to a safety deposit box. In her publications class, Veronica makes up a fake death certificate for Lianne. Luke catches up with her and tells her that he has a vested interest in her getting Troy’s father’s car back because he had a piñata full of steroids in the backseat. He did a drug run for Hank, who owns the sports club they were at before. Veronica asks if Troy and Logan knew about the drugs, but Luke says that they didn’t, then reveals that Logan did, but wasn’t really in on it. Veronica says that she won’t help Luke get the drugs back, but Luke says that he’ll be in physical danger if she doesn’t. Veronica says that if she helps, Luke has to return the steroids, get his money back, and give Hank the money instead of the drugs. Luke agrees to the deal.
Veronica heads to the bank, where she presents Lianne’s fake death certificate and the key to the safety deposit box. In the box, she finds photos of herself with crosshairs over her face. Back at home, she determines that someone followed her last year, and Keith doesn’t know about the photos. Ms. James arrives for her date with Keith; Veronica and Ms. James try to make awkward conversation and Veronica finally asks if Ms. James can get her out of bio. At school, Veronica tells Troy that she’s not making much headway in getting his father’s car back. She mentions that Logan might have had something to do with the car’s disappearance, but Troy doesn’t think he would have been interested in that. She asks if they ran into anyone interesting in Tijuana, but he’s not helpful in that department. After school, Veronica and Troy head to a tracking recovery corporation, where Veronica poses as Troy’s father’s assistant and sweet-talks her way into getting a diagnostic on the car. She comes close to succeeding, but ultimately doesn’t. At his house, Luke is confronted by Hank, who chases him but doesn’t catch him. At school, Veronica asks Logan about Luke’s steroids; he declines to give her any information. At home, Ms. James tries to get on Veronica’s good side. Veronica flashes back to Lianne cooking in the same kitchen and not being happy to learn that Veronica is dating Duncan. In the present, Keith returns home and Veronica begs out of Ms. James’ home-cooked dinner.
Veronica and Weevil head to a breakers yard, where Weevil asks his uncle Angel about Troy’s father’s car. He tells them that it’s come and gone, but Angel doesn’t remember the name of the guy who wound up with it. He does remember seeing the piñata - a co-worker took it for his daughter’s birthday party. They head to the party, which Veronica crashes to get the piñata, but discover that it’s full of candy, not steroids. Back at school, Veronica drags Luke into the girls’ restroom and tells him that the there were no drugs in the piñata. She tells him that he’d better get Hank’s money, but Luke doesn’t know how to. In the hall, Veronica flashes back to Lianne trying to take her out of school for some reason. She voices over that Lianne left three days later, and though she thought at the time that Lianne was just drunk, now she thinks that she was scared about something. At home, she mails untraceable, disposable cell phones to her mother’s relatives and friends, hoping that she’ll use one to contact Veronica. Keith arrives home and Veronica asks for his help to find Troy’s father’s car. Keith agrees to help if Veronica will be nice to Ms. James; she accepts the deal. The next day, they head to the tracking corporation, where Keith poses as the head of Troy’s father’s security and gets the company to activate the tracker in the car. Back at school, Veronica looks on as Luke auctions off a Barry Bonds baseball on eBay to get money for Hank. Outside, Veronica wonders why Troy isn’t more anxious about getting the car back. He says that he would rather spend his possible last few hours with her having fun.
In class, Veronica and another student snark at each other; after class, Ms. Dent chastises Veronica for not being nice. Once she’s alone, Veronica goes back to pryingeyez.com. She heads home and gives Keith the information she’s gathered from a background check on Ms. James. She notes that Ms. James is still married and Keith points out that he is, too. He tells her that she didn’t have a right to pry into his personal life, but Veronica says that she was trying to protect him. She’s upset that he let Ms. James into their lives so non-chalantly, and he replies that they tried to make her feel comfortable, but she didn’t cooperate. Veronica says that Lianne is still out there, and if Keith really wanted to find her, he could. He makes it clear that he doesn’t really want to find Lianne. He tells her that he got the security system in Troy’s father’s car turned on, then storms off. Veronica cries in her room. Later, she and Troy get a signal from the car, but soon realize that someone attached the tracking device to a dog. The next morning, Keith repays Veronica’s favor by giving her a file on Troy. He meets up with Ms. James at the coffee shop where they ran into each other in “Meet John Smith” and tells her that they can’t go out anymore because Veronica isn’t ready for Keith to date again. At school, Veronica lets Troy know that she’s aware of some of his past indiscretions, such as getting kicked out of two schools for drug trafficking and possession. She notes that he was kicked out with a girl named Shauna, then brings up Luke’s steroids, which Troy claims to know nothing about. He’s angry that she investigated him before he could come clean wit her.
Luke brings Veronica the money, though she’s less than thrilled in light of her fight with Troy. Later, she heads to the gym with Backup and tells Hank that she’s settling Luke’s account for him. She takes a phone call from Wallace (taking a photo of Hank with her phone in the process), then gives Hank the money. He tells her that the score isn’t settled and Veronica warns him that he’s going to regret this moment. Later, she downloads the photo she took of Hank onto Mars Investigations letterhead, writes a note, and faxes it somewhere. At home, Troy gets caught by his father and, having used up his chances, faces being shipped off to boarding school. Veronica presents Keith with a homemade birthday cake; he tells her that he and Ms. James have broken up. Troy heads to the diner he and Logan and Luke stopped at near the border, grabs a package from the restroom, and gets into his father’s BMW. He gets a call from Shauna, who he’s obviously still seeing, and she informs him that she got a call from Veronica. He’s unhappy to hear that Shauna told Veronica she’d be seeing him soon. Realizing that something’s off, Troy rips open the package to find candy and a note inside. He reads the note, in which Veronica tells him goodbye and notes that she flushed the steroids. At the border, a customs official recognizes Hank from the photo in Veronica’s fax and busts him. At home, Veronica listens to music through headphones and misses a call from Lianne, who says that she misses her. She adds that she’ll explain everything when the time is right, and she’ll be in touch again soon.
MEMORABLE QUOTES: Troy: “Isn’t this where we parked? Tell me that this isn’t where we parked. Please, someone tell me that you can see my father’s car and this heart attack that I’m having right now is for nothing.”
“Dude, where’s your car?” - Veronica to Troy
“Nice car. …It must have been a huge cereal box.” - Logan to Veronica
“Luke. A ball or your life. You do the math. (he hesitates) It’s a ball!” - Veronica
Troy: “Please tell me that a dog is not supposed to be the BMW.”
Written by Dayna North; directed by Nick Gomez
Logan: “Well, maybe it’s like Brigadoon. If you come back in a hundred years, it’ll be right back in this spot.”
Veronica: “You think your dad’ll notice?”