Veronica Mars Read Online Free PDF Page B

like a small luxury apartment, decorated in tones of gray and red. The central room was a combination living room and kitchenette, separated by a small round dining table. A tall, bearded man in a flannel shirt sat at the table, nursing a cup of coffee. He barely looked up when Margie led Veronica into the room, his eyesdistant and red rimmed. Veronica recognized him as Mike Dewalt, Hayley’s dad, from the press conference they’d held last week.
    A young man, maybe twenty-two or twenty-three, slouched on the scarlet sofa staring at a plasma screen TV on the wall. He was thickset, with wide, muscular shoulders and the beginnings of a beer gut, his premature jowls bristling with unshaven growth. He held the remote against one knee but seemed engrossed in a nature program where a wiry British man stood hip deep in a muddy river describing the way a tigerfish stripped its prey of flesh. On the other side of the couch sat a gangly-limbed teenager, her mousy brown hair long and limp around her face. She seemed intent on a hole in the knee of her blue jeans, probing it carefully with her fingertips.
    “The investigator is here,” Margie said. Only her husband looked up and nodded briefly at her. “Miss … March, did you say?”
    “Mars.” Veronica stood next to the kitchenette island, taking in the room. “But please, call me Veronica.”
    She noticed a large digital picture frame plugged in at one end of the island. It cycled slowly through a number of pictures, one fading into the next. Small Hayley Dewalt, riding a pink bike up a driveway. A preteen version with braces on her teeth and greasy bangs flattened across her forehead. One of her playing flute in what looked like a church. Another of her, older, in a cap and gown for graduation. She’d turned into a pretty girl, with dark hair and a sunny, easy smile that struck Veronica as unguarded, vulnerable.
You’ve got to put up your dukes, kid
, she thought, though she wasn’t sure if the advice was for Hayley—or herself.
    “The investigator is here,” Margie repeated more loudly. The girl looked up from the couch, then back down at her jeans. The young man on the couch didn’t respond.
    “Turn off the goddamn TV!” Mike Dewalt exploded, his voice furious and booming.
    Silently, slowly, the boy lifted the remote and turned off the TV just as the nature program cut to a clip of muscular fish thrashing around in a feeding frenzy. The screen went dark.
    For a moment the silence in the room had weight. Margie covered her face with her hands. Veronica noticed that her fingernails were painted Easter-egg blue, the polish chipped and cracked. Veronica pegged her as a classic, self-proclaimed “fun” mom, the kind who thinks of herself as her daughter’s best friend.
Just like dear old Mom
. Veronica’s alcoholic mother, Lianne, had been the same way before she walked out on their family.
    When Margie pulled her hands away from her face, she seemed calmer, her breath slow and careful. She pointed to the couch. “That’s Ella—she’s Hayley’s little sister—and my stepson, Crane.”
    Ella pulled her knees up to her chin. Crane straightened up and looked at Veronica, his dark hazel eyes taking her in.
    Veronica placed her bag on the floor and sat on a small upholstered armchair facing both of them. “How are you guys holding up?”
    “You know. We’re worried about our sister.” Crane’s eyes darted toward Margie as she sat down in another chair catty-corner from Veronica. It might just have been his way of dealing with stress, but Crane’s body was taut with pent-up energy. His knee jiggled up and down, and while he claspedhis hands politely in his lap, the knuckles were white. “Well, she’s only my half sister,” he continued, “but I’m just as upset as everyone else.”
    Veronica pulled her notebook out of her purse and flipped it to a blank page. She clicked her pen a few times and then wrote:
If you have to say it out loud …
    She