Episode 22: Leave It to Beaver
Well, this is it … the last episode of the first season, where Veronica (and the viewers) finally find out who killed Lilly. Hang on, ’cause this one gets pretty wild. We start with Keith talking to a newspaper reporter, trying to convince him to write about Abel Koontz being innocent of Lilly Kane’s murder. The reporter is skeptical, but Keith gives him a file full of evidence and introduces him to Koontz’s alibi, the hooker named Cheyenne. The reporter says he’ll check things out. At home, Keith gets the DNA test results back from the company he sent them to, but can’t open them right away since Veronica and Liane are in the
kitchen. They’re goofing around making tacos, trying to recapture the family life that ended when Liane walked out. Later at the office, Keith opens the test results, but we don’t get to see them yet. His lawyer comes in and asks if he’s crazy because he wants to sue Jake and Celeste Kane, the richest people in town. Keith is sure they’ll settle, since they do owe him for finding their son Duncan.
At school the next day, everyone is reading the story in the paper about Cheyenne (and the other evidence) giving Abel Koontz an airtight alibi for the night Lilly was killed. Dick Casablancas and his brother Beaver are 
especially interested; Beaver is freaking out about something, but Dick tells him to calm down and reminds him they promised to take whatever secret they have “to the grave”. Veronica’s pretty proud of her father, but she freaks and hides in the bathroom when she sees Logan. (With good reason … she found cameras and a video set-up in the pool house at his place last episode.) Wallace says she can’t avoid him forever. At the office, Keith is dumping Alicia, telling her he owes it to Veronica to try and make things work again with Liane.
At the Kane house, Jake and Celeste are planning a big party for the Governor when Duncan comes in with the paper and insists they stop lying and tell him what really happened. Jake agrees and says they came home that day and found Duncan with blood all over him, cradling his dead sister
out by the pool. They figured he must’ve had one of his psychotic fits and killed her by accident, so they covered up for him to protect him. Duncan’s trying to process that when a messenger brings the legal papers saying Keith is suing the Kanes. At school, Beaver tells Veronica that the day Lilly was killed, he, Dick, and Logan were surfing in Mexico and Logan kept going on about how he knew Lilly was cheating on him. Apparently, Logan got up early that day and headed back to Neptune.
Veronica tells her father that Logan is now a viable suspect and mentions a shot glass he’d bought for Lilly (“I got baked in Ensenada”). Keith recognizes it as an item that was found in Lilly’s car, which means Logan 
did see Lilly after he came back from Mexico. At school, Veronica runs into Logan and pretends everything is fine, giving him an excuse as to why she’s been avoiding him. Logan mentions the newspaper story and suggests Duncan must’ve killed Lilly. After he leaves, Veronica calls her dad and he confirms Logan crossed the border early in the morning on the day Lilly was killed. Weevil is in an adjacent room and overhears the call, jumping to the conclusion (which Veronica has already reached) that Logan killed Lilly.
Keith and his lawyer meet with the Kanes, who are willing to fork over the reward money as long as Veronica signs a document renouncing any future
claim to the Kane estate. Obviously, Jake and Celeste both believe Veronica is Jake’s daughter from his affair with Liane. Keith tells Veronica the deal and she signs the papers without hesitation. Then Keith reveals that he had a DNA test done and he is definitely her father, so she never would’ve had a claim on the Kane fortune. Veronica wants to celebrate, but Keith says with Logan’s alibi blown it’s time they took all their evidence to the cops.
Sheriff Lamb shows up at the Echolls house to search Logan’s room, reminding his officers to check the air vents since they’re a favourite hiding spot for teenagers. Aaron isn’t happy, but there’s not much he can do about 
it. Logan gets arrested just as he’s leaving school, which is lucky for him because Weevil was just about to bash his brains in with a pipe when the cops showed up. At the station, Lamb gets nowhere with Logan, who calls Veronica for help. Lamb finds that funny, since Veronica’s the one who gave him all the evidence pointing to Logan. Keith calls Lamb later and learns he had to let Logan go, since they had no compelling evidence. (Lamb also mentions that Logan and Veronica are dating, which Keith apparently didn’t know.)
Veronica’s walking the dog on the beach when Logan finds her. He tells her he did come back to confront Lilly about her cheating, but decided to just accept that things were over. He wrote a sappy goodbye letter and left it (with the shot glass) in Lilly’s car. He says the letter would show her that he couldn’t possibly have killed Lilly, but before Veronica can process that,
Keith shows up and Logan leaves. Later Veronica wonders why the cops found the shot glass in Lilly’s car, but not the letter. Veronica figures Lilly might have hidden Logan’s letter in her favourite place … the air vent in her room. Veronica decides to go to the Kane house and look for the letter, disguising herself as a waitress to sneak in during the party for the Governor. On her way out, she grabs some of Liane’s bottled water from the fridge and realizes it’s straight vodka, so she calls the rehab facility Liane was at.
Veronica’s ruse works and she makes her way through the party at the Kane house to Lilly’s room, where she finds one of the air vent screws is halfway out already. We see there’s someone hiding in the closet, but Veronica 
doesn’t notice. Duncan comes in and catches her, but she calms him down by telling him she thinks Logan killed Lilly, not him. Duncan doesn’t want to believe it, but Veronica lays out her evidence (while the unseen person in the closet listens to every word). They check the vent and Logan’s letter isn’t there, but several video tapes are. They go to Duncan’s room to play the tapes, which turn out to be of the pool house at the Echolls place; the first one (from the day Lilly died) shows her discovering the cameras and turning them off. An earlier tape shows Lilly and Aaron Echolls getting it on.
Veronica realizes that was the big secret Lilly hinted to her about and puts together what really happened that day. Lilly found the cameras and got pissed off that Aaron was secretly recording their sex sessions, so she stole the tapes and hid them in the vent at home. When Aaron went to her place
to get the tapes back, she refused so he killed her and took off. Duncan came home and found Lilly, which freaked him out so much he was practically catatonic. When his parents found Duncan with Lilly, they assumed he killed her and immediately started covering for him. Duncan can hardly believe Aaron killed Lilly, but Veronica mentions the beat-down he gave Trina’s scumbag boyfriend and reminds Duncan that Aaron beats Logan too.
Duncan says Aaron is at the party and he volunteers to keep him busy until Veronica can get back to her dad with the evidence. Veronica tells Duncan he’s not her half-brother and takes off. She calls her dad, who wants to 
come get her but she says Duncan is keeping Aaron occupied and she’ll be home in ten minutes. She tries to call Logan too, but he’s wasted walking along the railing of a bridge (which I think is the same bridge his mother jumped off). Weevil and his bikers show up to kick Logan’s ass and Logan is so hammered (or mad) he welcomes the fight. Duncan calls Veronica to tell her Aaron isn’t at the party anymore. Of course, we know where he is … yup, he’s in Veronica’s back seat.
He grabs the tapes and Veronica crashes the car on purpose, knocking them both out. She wakes up first and grabs the tapes back, but can’t reach her cell phone because Aaron is in the way. She takes off on foot and sees a
nearby house. Keith is getting worried that Veronica’s not back yet and goes to look for her. Nobody answers at the house, and Veronica notices Aaron isn’t in her car anymore, so she hides the tapes outside the house, one in an old washing machine, another in a barrel, and the last one she tosses onto the roof of the back porch. When she hammers at the back door, she gets a shock … Aaron is already inside and has knocked out the guy who lives there.
Aaron punches her out and she wakes up inside an old fridge that’s sitting among all the junk on the back porch. Aaron asks her where the tapes are and she refuses to tell him, so he pours gasoline all over the fridge. When she smells the gas, she tells him the tapes are on the roof and he climbs up 
to look. He finds one tape, but before he can wonder where the others are, Keith shows up looking for Veronica. Aaron jumps him and they kick the shit out of each other, fighting for Keith’s gun and using stuff from the porch to beat each other senseless. Keith gets the upper hand, but Aaron tosses his lighter into the gasoline, lighting up the fridge. Keith goes into the flames to get Veronica out of the fridge, catching his clothes on fire. Veronica puts out the flames, but he’s pretty badly burned. Aaron tries to steal Keith’s car, but Back-up (the pit bull) is inside and almost chews Aaron’s arm off. He stumbles out into the road and gets run over by a truck. (Ironically, it’s some kind of flower truck, with a lily painted on the side.)
Veronica comes down with Keith’s gun and tells the driver to call 911. Keith is taken to hospital and so is Aaron, though he’s also arrested. The Kanes show up and Jake threatens to destroy Aaron for killing his daughter. Jake is also arrested for obstruction of justice. Veronica goes home and tells her mother to get the hell out of the house. She knows her mom never quit
drinking, which means she wasted all her college money on rehab that didn’t take. Keith wakes up in the hospital to find Alicia there, which Veronica arranged since she didn’t want him to wake up alone. Veronica goes to sleep and her mother (who’s a class act all the way) steals the reward check on her way out the door. Veronica dreams of hanging out with Lilly in a pool (which is filled with lilies) and Lilly tells her everything will be fine now. She’s awakened by a knock on the door and when she opens it, she says “I was hoping it would be you.” We don’t get to see who it is, but my money’s on Duncan. We’ll have to wait until next season (which is the next episode in my reviews) to see the fallout from all this.