Episode 13: Lord of the Bling
This one starts at the mansion of rich record producer Percy “Bone” Hamilton (played by Anthony Anderson), who’s complaining to his wife (Vanessa) about their kids. Their son Bryce is too much of a wimp and an intellectual for Bone to respect him, and their daughter Yolanda is constantly wasting money on riding lessons and nightclub jaunts. Bone gets a wake-up call when Bryce comes in to tell him something’s happened to Yolanda. At Keith Mars’s office, Veronica and Wallace are discussing Lynn Echolls’ suicide, which the media’s going crazy over; apparently she left the goodbye note on her Blackberry. Keith comes in and Veronica has to remind him to
take his pain meds, since he hurt his back bringing in a bail jumper. Bone Hamilton comes in to see Keith and Veronica doesn’t recognize him. Wallace fills her in on Bone’s checkered career, including dangling a dude out a window to make him sign a contract, which sounds like the old Suge Knight/Vanilla Ice rumour. Veronica realizes Bone must be Yolanda Hamilton’s father; when Wallace asks how she knows Yolanda, Veronica says, “We used to be friends, a long time ago”, which leads neatly into the opening credits.
Bone tells Keith that Yolanda was supposed to be studying at her friend’s place, but Bryce found her car a block from their house with signs of a struggle. Bone gives Keith a long list of people who might want to screw him 
over and suggests he start at the top, with a guy named Samuel Bloom. When his initial investigation of the scene turns up nothing, Veronica tells her dad she’ll ask around at school. Veronica remembers when she first met Yolanda, over a year ago when Yolanda was new to the school. Veronica saved her from an embarrassing situation and introduced her to Logan, Duncan, and Lilly. Keith goes to see Bloom, who used to be Bone’s lawyer. Bloom tells Keith that Bone got involved in tax evasion and Bloom cooperated with the Feds to save his law practice, which resulted in Bone going to jail. A couple months later, somebody did a drive-by on Bloom’s car and now he’s in a wheelchair. So, there’s definitely some hatred there, although Bone denied having anything to do with the shooting.
At school, Veronica realizes Yolanda’s friend is covering for her and soon gets the truth: they went to Los Angeles to a nightclub where Yolanda knows the bouncer because he used to work for her father. She says Yolanda
was still at the club when she left but Yolanda still had her car. Veronica remembers inviting Yolanda to one of Logan’s big parties back when they were all friends. At the Echolls house, Aaron is pretty down about his wife’s suicide and tries to reminisce with Logan. But Logan points out that his father is kind of an abusive prick, so it’s hard to have happy family memories with him. Logan’s sister Trina (who’s an actress) sent a telegram, which Logan finds pretty cold.
Keith figures Bone’s ex-bodyguard Marcel (the nightclub bouncer) might have a grudge, since Bone fired him for ogling her. Veronica insists on driving her dad to L.A., since he’s on meds. Keith talks to Marcel, but he says 
he learned his lesson and all he did was let Yolanda into the club. He does mention someone else was there that night who might have a beef with Bone. Keith tells Veronica that Dimebag, the rapper Bone dangled out the window, was at the club the night Yolanda disappeared with his bunch of dudes. (Veronica: “It’s posse, dad; the Eagles have a bunch of dudes.”) Veronica hasn’t been idle either; she broke into the lockbox and took the valet parking stubs so they can see who was there the night Yolanda went missing.
They go to Dimebag’s hotel, but he’s not there and management wouldn’t let Keith near him anyway. Keith decides to dress up like a maintenance worker and plant a bug. While he’s upstairs, Veronica stakes out the lobby and thinks back to when she and Lilly hung out at Yolanda’s place. Lilly was mad at Logan for being so jealous all the time, so she said she was skipping
his big party, leaving Veronica and Yolanda to go alone. The three of them made plans to hit San Diego for Fleet Week later on. In the hotel lobby, Veronica sees Dimebag and his bunch of dudes (er … I mean posse) return and demand a bigger suite. Since her father is now bugging the wrong room (and she just happened to slip an extra bug into her pocket), she pretends to be a hotel worker and takes Dimebag and his entourage upstairs to show them their new suite. While she’s there, she plants the bug. When she and Keith listen in later, the rappers are talking about how hot she was … and how scrawny.
As Logan and Aaron get ready to leave for the funeral, Aaron tries to make peace with his son. There’s a photographer hiding in the bushes and Logan smashes his camera, then tells Aaron that Lynn killed herself because he 
kept banging all her friends. At school, Veronica talks to Bryce, who’s working on some hydrological civil engineering project. He says Yolanda must be in deep trouble and wonders why his father won’t call the cops. He says Bone is embarrassed to have him as a son, even though Bone spent years in jail when Bryce was growing up. Bryce asks why Veronica and Lilly stopped being friends with Yolanda and Veronica thinks back to the night of Logan’s big party. Logan was drunk and pissed off about Lilly not showing up, so he ended up kissing Yolanda. Veronica told Lilly, who immediately wanted nothing more to do with Yolanda.
Keith tells Bone that Dimebag might know something and asks him to call the rapper. Dimebag pretends to know where Yolanda is to get Bone to beg for his help, but then admits he doesn’t know shit. Keith listens to Dimebag
and his homies talking after the phone call and it seems they really don’t know where she is. While going through the parking stubs, Veronica finds out that Samuel Bloom’s son (Benjamin) was at he club the night Yolanda disappeared. At Lynn’s funeral, Aaron’s agent pressures him about a movie he’s supposed to be making and Aaron ends up firing him. He also claims he’s going to quit acting altogether.
Duncan talks to Logan, who’s not showing a ton of emotion (aside from exasperation). Logan finally admits that he thinks his mom is still alive. He 
shows Duncan a lighter that Lynn’s father had with him as a POW in the Korean War. Afterward, he had it engraved with the words “Free at Last”. After he died, Lynn carried it everywhere with her, but she left it behind the day she supposedly killed herself. Logan figures it was her way of telling him she was getting out, escaping the Hollywood bullshit and trying to have a normal life again. The fact that her body hasn’t been found, convinces Logan that he’s right.
Keith talks to Bloom about his son, who was cited by the cops for hanging around Yolanda’s house a while back. Keith wonders if Benjamin might want some payback for his father getting shot. Bloom says Benjamin isn’t that type of kid and that he’s currently unreachable, hiking in Mexico with some friends. Keith gets Veronica to call Benjamin’s college roommate and
find out if he’s really in Mexico. After pretending to be a hook-up with crabs, Veronica learns that Benjamin took off alone a week ago, but the roommate saw a confirmation number for a hotel in Las Vegas on his desk. Keith calls a fellow detective in Vegas and asks him to check all the hotels for Benjamin Bloom … which is a pretty tall order, since Vegas is riddled with hotels. Keith asks why Veronica is so invested in finding Yolanda and she remembers how she chose Lilly and her friends over Yolanda a year ago, giving in to peer pressure and freezing her out, even though Yolanda insisted Logan kissed her and it didn’t go anywhere.
Bone comes in and shows Keith a ransom note he just received: $500,000 or Yolanda dies. Keith thinks it’s strange the note has all the details of the ransom drop included, which gives them time to stake the place out or even call the cops. He figures whoever sent it must be either really stupid or 
really smart. Bone says the kidnapper is stupid and (based on a phrase in he note) he’s sure it’s Dimebag. Bone gets the money and sticks a tracker in the valise with it. Keith asks him to let the cops in on it but Bone refuses, saying his bodyguards will take care of the kidnappers. He fires Keith, but Keith wants to keep Yolanda from getting hurt, so he and Veronica go to check out the ransom drop. The place is terrible for a ransom drop, with no escape routes and great surveillance for the cops. It’s pouring rain and Veronica gets an idea when she sees water flowing into a storm drain. She buys a bunch of rubber ducks and tells her dad to start bugging them.
At the time of the drop, it’s still raining. Bone gets a call telling him Yolanda’s in a cab up the street. He’s told to retrieve a plastic football from a garbage can and put his ring (worth $250,000) inside and throw it down the storm drain. He does, but when he and his guards swarm the cab, Yolanda’s not there and the cabbie has no idea what’s going on. But Veronica’s bugged
rubber duckies have paid off and lead her to the storm drain’s ultimate exit and the culprit … Bryce. I guess his civil engineering project was a little more personal than he let on. He admits he overheard Yolanda talking about running off with someone and brought her car back from the club so he could cook up the fake kidnapping to get his dad’s attention. Keith gets a call from his friend in Vegas, who’s apparently found Yolanda.
They go to Bone’s place, where Bryce admits what he did and says his dad can get mad if he ants, but he can’t call him a wimp anymore. Keith has set up a video call with Yolanda in Vegas. She tells her parents she and 
Benjamin are married, but they’re not coming back until their parents stop acting like assholes to each other. Yolanda believes her dad didn’t order Bloom’s shooting, but she’s pissed off that he used it to get street cred for himself. She asks for Bone’s blessing but he won’t give it to her. Later, Veronica calls Yolanda to apologize for screwing her over and Yolanda says she’d have done the same in her position. There’s a knock on Veronica’s door and it’s Logan; he wants her to find his mother.