Episode 19: Hot Dogs
This one starts with Veronica at the office helping Weevil with his math. Weevil asks about Duncan suddenly taking off (with $10,000 in cash) and about the rumours Veronica accused him of killing his sister, Lilly. Veronica denies that, but it’s obvious she thinks there’s more to Lilly’s murder than everyone believes. They’re interrupted by Veronica’s dad coming in. Being the former sheriff, Keith’s not too thrilled about his daughter hanging out with the local thug. Across town, a girl named Mandy is reading a Judy Blume book (I think it’s Forever), when she hears her dog Chester going nuts outside. By the time she gets out to take a look, Chester is gone. At school the next day, Logan
asks Veronica about Duncan and tells her he has no idea where he might be. Logan doesn’t mention the awkward kiss they shared last episode, so Veronica figures he’s just going to pretend it never happened and she resolves to do the same. She sees Mandy putting up posters about Chester and Mandy asks if she can hire Veronica to find her missing pooch. Veronica says dogs aren’t really her thing, but we all know she’s a marshmallow at heart, so she offers to help. Wallace comes along to tell Veronica some shocking news: Weevil broke into the Kane house last night and was caught in Lilly’s bedroom.
Veronica goes to the police station to see Weevil. She asks Leo (her kinda sorta boyfriend, who she hasn’t called in a couple days) what Weevil had on 
him when he was caught. Leo says he really didn’t have anything except a couple rubbers, a pen, and seventeen cents in change. Veronica asks Weevil what he was doing and when he says he was just robbing the place, she tells him she knows about the letters he’d sent Lilly. Weevil says she doesn’t know as much as she thinks, but refuses to say any more, so Veronica refuses to help him. Weevil finally admits he’d given Lilly a diamond that belonged to his grandmother and wanted it back. He didn’t find it but now the Kane’s are pissed off and he’s looking at hard time, since he’s eighteen.
Veronica helps Mandy print out some better posters about Chester and asks about the night he was taken. Turns out Mandy wasn’t at home, she was babysitting for some people who let her tie Chester up outside. Mandy actually lives on the poor side of town. At the Echolls house, Aaron is reading Siddartha (which he claims Phil Jackson recommended), when
Trina tries to talk him into appearing in some crap fest her current boyfriend (Dylan) is producing. Aaron tells her he was serious about quitting acting and that he wants to devote himself to his family. Logan overhears that and doesn’t buy it for a second. Their lawyer comes by with Lynn’s will and it turns out she amended it not long ago and cut Aaron out completely. (Probably after she found out he’d been cheating on her like crazy.) Lynn left her art collection and personal stuff (as well as an investment account worth $115,000) to Logan. Trina asks if she was cut out too, but it turns out she was never in to begin with.
Veronica and Mandy go to the dog pound to hand out a flyer and ask about Chester. They haven’t seen him, but one of the workers (Hans) recognizes Veronica as a kick-ass detective. Hans says he’ll keep an eye out for Chester. 
At the Echolls house, Trina asks Logan to loan her $10,000, which doesn’t surprise him at all. Trina says she lent her boyfriend Dylan some money a while back and now he’s bugging her to get it back. Logan turns her down. At school, Mandy gets a call about Chester, but it turns out to be an asshole playing a prank. (A dude she had a crush on and when he found out, he made fun of her for it.) Veronica tears into the guy in front of everyone, making him look like a dick and warning him to leave Mandy alone. She tells Mandy you sometimes have to force people to treat you with respect.
Veronica gets a call from Hans at the pound with bad news: Chester was found run over beside the highway and had to be put down. Hans returns his collar to Mandy, who’s devastated. While walking her own dog (Backup) on the beach, Veronica notices a billboard covered in posters about lost dogs. She takes them all and starts making calls. Turns out all the people who offered big rewards have gotten their dogs back. She wonders if someone is
stealing dogs, returning some for big money, and dumping the less valuable ones, like Chester. She takes a poster that offers a $100 reward for a missing spaniel and changes it to $1000. While she’s working, Celeste Kane comes in and starts giving her shit, blaming Veronica for Duncan taking off. Veronica says she didn’t tell Duncan all the crazy shit Celeste has done and Celeste insists she doesn’t have anything against Veronica, she’s just a reminder of how screwed up her own life is.
Keith comes in and tells Celeste to get lost, and she says he isn’t much of a detective if he couldn’t see his wife was screwing around on him. Veronica stops Celeste on the way out and says she might have an idea where Duncan is and she’ll help find him if Celeste drops the charges against Weevil. Even 
though nothing was stolen or damaged, Celeste doesn’t like that idea … which is probably a good thing, since Veronica was bullshitting about knowing where Duncan might be. She puts up the posters around town with the $1000 reward for he spaniel. At the Echolls home, Trina comes in all beat to shit and Logan figures out her scumbag boyfriend must be responsible. But when he tries to find out more, Trina reminds him that he didn’t give a damn about her problems before, so it’s a bit late to play the concerned brother now.
Veronica gets a call about the spaniel and sends Wallace to the dog park to make the pay-off. A dude who looks about two steps away from being homeless gets out of a sketchy van with the dog. Wallace pays him, but the guy doesn’t speak English so he can’t find out where he got the dog. As the guy’s leaving, Veronica lets Backup loose and he knocks the dude over and
starts chewing on his shoe. Veronica gets Backup back on his leash and apologizes, but in the confusion she managed to steal back the $1000 and plant a tracker on the guy. She follows him to Neptune’s equivalent of a Wal-Mart parking lot, where a bunch of Hispanic dudes are hanging out. When he sees her, he starts freaking out (in Spanish) and accuses her of stealing his money. She soon finds herself surrounded by an irate crowd.
Once she calms them down (with an air horn),Veronica establishes that someone in a white van pays them to return dogs to their owners. Because 
of the language barrier, details are hard to come by, even with pantomime. (“So there’s a dog-man who hires these guys to return dogs; he drives a white van, or maybe a white horse, and he likes to spank busty women. Basically, that’s any male living in Neptune.”) Meanwhile, Wallace returns the spaniel to its real owner, hoping she’s hot, grateful, and single. She turns out to be older than he was hoping for, and she seems very grateful … not sure about the single part, though.
At school, Veronica notices a white van with sexy lady mud flaps and a radio station logo of a white bucking bronco on the window, which explains what the guys at the parking lot were miming. It turns out to be Hans’s van and
Veronica accuses him of kidnapping dogs from rich people to collect rewards. She says when he found out Mandy was poor (and that Veronica was sniffing around), he killed Chester and dumped him. Hans denies everything and tells her to get lost. She runs into Weevil, who thanks her for getting him released from jail. At the office, Logan comes by to ask Veronica to help track down Dylan. Once she hears what he did to Trina, Veronica’s eager to help.
At home, Trina’s putting on makeup to (unsuccessfully) hide her bruises when Aaron comes in. She asks him again about appearing in Dylan’s movie, comparing it to Travolta’s comeback role in Pulp Fiction. That gets Aaron’s attention and he tells her to invite Dylan over for dinner. At the 
office, Veronica bullshits someone over the phone about financing Dylan’s script and gets his last name. She finds out he’s got restraining orders from a couple of other women. Logan calls his father and finds out Dylan has been invited for dinner. Before he can tell his father what a prick Dylan is, Aaron hangs up. At the Echolls house, Trina introduces Dylan, who goes on about his cliched script (A junkie hitman who takes heroin to silence the demons in his head? Really?) Aaron tells Dylan about his own childhood, saying his father used to beat the shit out of him and his mom. Aaron goes on to say he tried to stand up to his father, but was too young to do anything. He gives Dylan a close up look at his hand (where his father supposedly put out a cigarette), then proceeds to kick the living shit out of him.
Obviously, Aaron’s not dense, he knew Dylan beat Trina up so now he’s returning the favour. He really lets Dylan have it, knocking his ass all over the place and destroying the furniture, ending up by whipping him with his belt. Veronica and Logan come in just in time to see the end, which freaks Veronica out. (Logan seems cool with it, which is a bit weird, since Aaron’s done the same to him. Not that Dylan deserves much sympathy, but Aaron’s
obviously an asshole too, so I’m not sure who to cheer for here.) Logan drags Dylan out to his car and sees him off, then asks Veronica about Weevil and Lilly. Logan knew Lilly liked guys and says Lilly told him her parents loved Duncan and tolerated her. She figured if they were going to ignore her anyway, she might as well have fun pissing them off, which Weevil would be great for. Logan says he’s relieved he doesn’t have to feel guilty about moving on, then he lays a big smooch on Veronica. She’s into it, just like last time, but says they should keep things quiet while they figure out their feelings.
In Logan’s car, Veronica has a memory of Lilly showing her a “spy pen” that had a secret compartment for hiding messages. Later, Veronica asks Mandy if she wants to go to the pound; Veronica lays out her theory about the dog-napping and Mandy says she’s in. Veronica stops by the police 
station and tells Leo she can’t see him anymore. She mentions making out with Logan and Leo’s obviously not too happy. He’s even less happy when she follows up her confession by asking for a favour. Leo takes Veronica, Mandy, and Wallace to the pound and bullies his way in. They find a locked room in the back where a bunch of the missing dogs are being held. Mandy’s worked up because she was hoping Chester would be there, so while Leo arrests one guy, Mandy goes out and tasers the shit out of Hans. Veronica pulls her off and Hans insists Chester isn’t really dead. Apparently the dogs they couldn’t scam a reward for, they sold.
As they’re leaving, Veronica asks Leo about the pen Weevil had when he was arrested. Leo says it was kinda girly, big and pink. At home, Keith is taking hair from Veronica’s brush and from his own head and puts them in one of those mail order DNA test kits. Of course, Veronica’s already done that, but she shredded the results without reading them. Veronica comes home and asks why her father cleared Weevil in Lilly’s death if he knew Weevil had
been stalking her and sending threatening letters. Keith says Weevil’s alibi was airtight and shows her the files (which he kept in his closet in a box marked “Playboys” … hey it worked, Veronica never went near it). Veronica mentions the new timeline of he murder, but Keith points out that the Kane’s wouldn’t have faked the timeline and their own alibis to protect Weevil. Mandy gets Chester back from the people who bought him. At school, Veronica asks about the pen and Weevil gives it to her, but there’s no message hidden inside. She asks if there was one and Weevil says if he told her, it wouldn’t really be a secret.