Episode 4: Green-Eyed Monster
This one starts with Veronica doing some paperwork on Sunday at her dad’s office. She doesn’t officially work for him anymore, but I guess she still helps with clerical stuff. A woman (Julie Bloch) comes in desperate to hire Keith to dig up some dirt on her boyfriend, Colin Nevin. She recently found an engagement ring while rooting through his gym bag and wants to figure out if he’s trustworthy before making a bigger commitment. (Yes, Julie is irony-impaired.) Julie’s pretty paranoid, so Veronica sells her on the Silver Package, which
entails surveillance as well as background and email checks. But when Veronica tells Keith about it, he says he’s swamped already and since he’s running for Sheriff he just doesn’t have time. Veronica offers to take some of his (non-dangerous) caseload, but he’d rather she concentrate on school. The $2000 Julie is willing to pay is too much to pass up, so Veronica pretends to call her and recommend a different detective, but she’s obviously going to take the case herself.
Julie tells Veronica that her family has tons of money and she has a history of falling for guys who don’t care about her, just her bank balance. She’s been pretending to be a regular middle-class gal for Colin (who apparently 
lives off a trust fund, so he’s actually rich), but lately he’s been getting weird phone calls and going out a lot … supposedly to play tennis, but Julie’s not convinced. There’s also a photo of another woman on Colin’s bar and she has no clue who it is. At Wallace’s place, his mom Alicia sees him off to school and right after he leaves, that dude who recognized Alicia in Chicago last episode drives past the house. Alicia’s pretty freaked out when she sees him, so she was obviously lying when she told Keith she didn’t know him.
Veronica follows Colin and he seems pretty innocent so far. Julie calls to give her the phone number that’s been calling Colin incessantly and to remind her to follow him tomorrow when he goes to play tennis. Alicia stops by Keith’s office and asks him for a gun. She admits she knows the
guy from Chicago … he’s her ex that she hasn’t seen for twenty years and he’s nuts. Keith says she shouldn’t have a gun without training, especially in a house with a seven-year-old kid. When he hears about the guy driving by Alicia’s place, he offers to stay over. Alicia wonders what they’ll tell the kids and Keith says he’s got it covered. The next morning, Keith “stops by” early with some donuts, claiming he was in the neighbourhood. Naturally, Wallace wasn’t fooled and when he mentions it to Veronica at school, she sees through the sham too.
Keith catches Alicia’s ex (Carl Morgan, who’s played by Cress Williams of Black Lightning fame) prowling around her house and takes photos of him. Keith has done a background check and found out Carl is an ex-con dope 
dealer. Carl seems to know a lot about Keith too, but Keith isn’t in the mood for chitchat. He tells Carl to leave town or he might get shot, but Carl says Alicia took something that belongs to him and he’s not leaving without it. Veronica goes to the hospital to see Meg, who’s still in a coma. She’s been putting it off, so she’s surprised to find Duncan already there. Before they can get in to see Meg, her parents come out and her dad freaks, blaming Duncan (and Veronica) for Meg being there in the first place. He figures Meg wouldn’t have been on the bus if she was still going out with Duncan, which is something that Veronica’s been feeling guilty about too.
Veronica follows Colin to his tennis match, except he isn’t playing tennis. He goes to a house out in the burbs and is invited in by a woman. The house address matches the phone number that’s been calling Colin so often and
when Veronica sends Julie the photos and asks about the address, Julie freaks. Veronica sneaks up to take some more incriminating pictures, but it turns out the house belongs to a rabbi who’s teaching Colin Hebrew. Julie shows up ready to kill Colin and Veronica tackles her on the lawn before she can make an idiot of herself. Julie’s a little slow (Julie: “A rabbi? He’s not Jewish, I’m Jewish!”; Veronica: “Are you there yet?”), so it takes her a minute to realize Colin’s learning Hebrew because he wants to have a proper Jewish ceremony when they get married.
Julie calls Veronica that night to kvetch about Colin. She wants to upgrade to 
the Gold Package, which digs even deeper and includes a “temptation scenario” to see if Colin’s interested in other women. Veronica agrees (it’s $3000, so cha-ching for her), but tells Julie there’s a fine line between looking for a problem and creating one. Keith stops by Sheriff Lamb’s office to tell him about Carl Morgan. Lamb’s skeptical, but Keith reminds him it is his job to catch criminals and Morgan does have an outstanding warrant in Chicago.
At school, Veronica asks Weevil about his diamond earring that was found outside the Road Hog … which is also the last place Curly Moran was seen
before washing up on the beach. Weevil says he got a weird phone call about Moran being behind the bus crash. Supposedly an Irish gang (the Fitzpatricks) hired Curly to crash the bus because Savando (one of the passengers) hustled the Fitzpatricks out of some money. Weevil figured the call was bullshit because the Fitzpatricks wouldn’t kill a busload of kids to get to Savando, they’d just kick the shit out of him in an alley. Veronica gets the phone number from Weevil’s cell.
Veronica calls Wallace to ask him for help with her temptation snare, since her regular people were all busy. Speaking of busy, Wallace is about to get some action from Jackie, but when Veronica offers him $200, he decides to 
help her out. Jackie’s pretty pissed off that he’s dropping her to go help Veronica. Veronica dresses up like a slutty sorority girl and lets the air out of her tires across from Colin’s place. She rings his doorbell and tries to tempt him with her feminine wiles, with Wallace hiding nearby videotaping the whole thing. Despite all her pouting, posing, and innuendo, Colin doesn’t really seem interested, although he does give her a monogrammed handkerchief to wipe grease off her face. She does manage to get invited inside his house when she says she needs his computer to email in a term paper.
She keeps pouring on the sexy (hinting that she and her dorm roommate are up for a threeway), but Colin just won’t bite. While pretending to email the term paper, she copies his files and he tells her that this house isn’t even his
… he’s house-sitting for Nicolas Cage. Wallace comes to the door and pretends to be selling candy for charity, but the only candy he has is some half-eaten chocolates. Veronica finishes copying the files and she and Wallace take off, leaving Colin to wonder what the hell was going on. Veronica stops by Duncan’s hotel for a booty call, but kinda kills the mood when she asks him why he’s been visiting Meg so often. Later, Veronica goes through Colin’s browser history and finds out that he knows Julie comes from a wealthy family because he’s been doing some digging of his own.
Late that night, Lizzie (Meg’s sister) comes by to ask Duncan for help. Meg had a private laptop where she stored all her secret emails (since their 
parents routinely invade their privacy), which she kept at school. But the school is cleaning out Meg’s stuff and told her parents, so Lizzie needs help to get whatever crazy shit Meg has on her computer off of it, or her parents will freak. Despite being the son of a computer visionary, Duncan is no techie, but Veronica says she knows someone who could help. She calls Mac, who gets the emails off the laptop and onto a flash drive, which Lizzie gives Duncan.
In the morning, Veronica sees the flash drive on the table and (being a professional snoop) is tempted to see what Meg was hiding. She gets a call
from Julie and reassures her that Colin didn’t try anything. Hearing Julie talk about how crazy jealous she is makes Veronica reconsider snooping in Meg’s emails. Leaving Alicia’s house, Keith finds his car has boots on all four tires. He calls Sheriff Lamb, who tells him “Carl Morgan” is actually Nathan Woods, undercover Chicago cop. Lamb figured Keith was trying to screw him over, but of course Keith had no idea who Nathan really was.
Veronica meets with Julie to tell her Colin seems to be an upstanding guy (and mentions the house-sitting for Nic Cage—apparently the photo on the bar is Lisa Marie Presley, who Cage was married to at the time). Instead of being relieved, Julie focuses in on the fact that Colin lied about having 
money and the fact that he was looking into her background. (Yeah, she’s also hypocrisy-impaired.) Keith comes in and Julie leaves, crying all the way. Keith gives Veronica shit for lying to him and taking cases behind his back; he also knows she spent the night at Duncan’s place. Veronica notices that Colin’s internet search for Julie’s family was only a few days ago, but Julie found the ring two weeks ago. So Colin was obviously planning to propose before he knew she was rich and was probably just looking up her family to get her father’s permission.
But when Veronica calls Julie to tell her the good news, Julie’s still pissed off about Colin lying. Veronica reminds her she lied too, but Julie says lying about having money is way worse than lying about not having it. Julie has
already dumped Colin (by voicemail) and Veronica realizes she’s just a shallow asshole. (Veronica: “I think I get it now … money matters.”; Julie: “Of course it matters!”) Keith goes by Alicia’s place while she’s out and rifles through her stuff. Veronica is looking at Colin’s handkerchief and recognizes the logo. Turns out Colin is heir to a big whiskey fortune (Loch Nevin), but he keeps it quiet so he won’t attract gold diggers. Veronica sends Julie a package showing her who Colin really is and a note saying they were both looking to be loved for who they really were … but only one of them was.
When Keith has trouble sorting out the files at his office, he asks Veronica to come back to work a few days a week, but just for routine stuff, nothing 
major. Naturally, she agrees. She traces the number that called Weevil with the Curly Moran tip and it’s registered to Aaron Echolls. That reinforces her theory that Aaron hired Curly to crash the bus, but when she asks Logan about it, he just gives her more suspects. Apparently the night of the phone call, Logan had a party at his place which Weevil’s bikers crashed … oh, and the cops showed up too. So anyone could’ve made the call from there. Meanwhile, Keith has figured out who Nathan Woods really is from checking into Alicia’s background. Nathan stops by Alicia’s house and tells Wallace he’s his father.