Episode 13: Ain’t No Magic Mountain High Enough
This one starts at school, with Veronica arriving at Ms. Hauser’s class to help organize a fundraising carnival for the senior class trip. The rich kids want to go to Catalina for the trip, but everyone else wants to go to Magic Mountain at Disneyland; guess who’s getting their way? Madison (the snotty cheerleader) and JB (a guy competing with Veronica for
the Kane Scholarship) are there, as well as Weevil and some stoner dude, all of them driving Ms. Hauser crazy. Jackie arrives at school and has to put up with a bunch of shit from everyone because her dad is a suspect in the bus crash. Madison tells Jackie she’ll ruin the carnival if she shows up and Jackie says that’s the plan. At Keith’s office, he’s surprised to find Jackie’s dad (Terrence) waiting to see him.
The carnival is pretty elaborate, with a ball pit, shooting gallery, rides, and tons of food for sale. Madison and the cheerleaders are selling baked goods (and doing pretty well), while Veronica is stuck at the sno-cone/slushie 
booth. Logan stops by to get a couple of slushies and mouth off. Weevil is there with his niece, buying balloons and Thumper comes by to gloat about Weevil no longer being the leader of the pack. Logan and Dick notice Dick’s brother (Beaver) hanging out with Mac, the computer geek … and they look pretty friendly. Naturally, Dick has to be a prick about it. Jackie stops at Veronica’s booth to commiserate and Ms. Hauser comes by to collect the money Veronica’s made. JB asks Ms. Hauser for the keys to her classroom to get some stuff and just as Veronica hands over her money, a bunch of kids coming streaking through the carnival. Ms. Hauser leaves the cash box with Veronica, who sticks it under the counter.
When Ms. Hauser returns to get the money a few minutes later, the cash box is gone. There’s access to the counter from the outside, something Veronica obviously didn’t notice. Principal Clemmons happens by and Ms. Hauser tells him Veronica has lost all the senior trip money … which amounts to
about $12,000. Veronica suggests they set up the metal detectors to keep anyone from leaving with the locked cash box, and lock every room in the school that might have tools the thief could use to open the box. Madison is nearby and says Jackie might have stolen the money, since the threatened to ruin things that morning. Logan goes to a game booth where a cute girl (Hannah) is working and he gets kinda flirty with her. Veronica tries to be all casual, checking Weevil’s niece (Ophelia) and her backpack, but Weevil figures out what she’s doing right away and tells her to just search it. Of course, the cash box isn’t there.
At the office, Terrence tells Keith that Sheriff Lamb is using him as a scapegoat because he supports Mayor Goodman and his incorporation plans … which would leave Lamb out in the cold. Terrence says there were baseball 
fragments plus pieces of a cell phone found in the bus wreckage. He says he signed some baseballs for the students at the ball park, but Lamb claims Terrence planted a bomb on the bus and detonated it with a cell phone call. He wants Keith to prove his innocence. At the carnival, Veronica goes by her old booth to find Beaver and Mac trying to unjam the ice machine. She tells Beaver to use the screwdriver she kept there and he says Jackie just borrowed it. Veronica follows Jackie into the school bathroom, wondering if she really did steal the cash box. Turns out Jackie needed the screwdriver to scratch out some filthy graffiti someone wrote about her in a bathroom stall.
Jackie has also changed into a bikini because she’s the feature attraction at the dunk tank and, thanks to her father being a bus crash suspect, tons of people have paid good money to dunk her. Veronica says Jackie has nothing
to prove to these people, but Jackie reminds her that when everyone was treating Keith like crap, Veronica didn’t just stand by and take it. Jackie gets into position and the haters line up to dunk her. At the office, Keith gets a little starstruck, telling Terrence he’s a huge fan and always wanted to have a beer with him. As they have a couple of beers, Keith tells Terrence he first saw him in AAA ball and followed him ever since. Keith asks about Terrence and Ms. Dumas, the teacher who died in the bus crash.
At the carnival, Wallace tries to give Jackie a break by throwing the balls wild, but he’s forced to move on. Dick is an asshole as usual, embarrassing 
Beaver by telling Mac that he’s a virgin (which she probably already guessed). Logan keeps working on Hannah, doing his charming/obnoxious bit, which she seems to go for. It’s getting late and Jackie’s half-frozen from all the dunkings, but she refuses to give in. Veronica gets an idea where the cash box might be hidden and asks Clemmons to empty the ball pit. Unfortunately, she’s wrong and the box isn’t in there. Meanwhile, Clemmons gets some video from a student who was filming for the video yearbook.
Clemmons calls Jackie, Madison, JB, Weevil, and Dick into his office. He says their lockers are all being searched because they were all nearby when the
cash box went missing. JB points out that even if they find some money, there’s no way of knowing if it’s the money stolen from the carnival. Veronica tells Clemmons there was a fifty dollar bill with the name Nancy and a phone number scrawled on the back. The video shows Jackie with something under her coat, but she says it was her gym bag with her bikini and towel in it. Ms. Hauser doesn’t believe her … I think she’s basically just a racist at heart. Meanwhile, Logan’s still wooing Hannah and Beaver is planning revenge on Dick.
At the office, Terrence tells Keith he did have a thing with Ms. Dumas, but she turned into a stalker and started threatening him. She broke up his engagement and moved to Neptune just to be around him. Keith points out 
that the whole mess with Ms. Dumas looks like a better motive than supporting Woody’s incorporation plans. At the carnival, Veronica remembers Weevil and Logan’s prank with a teacher’s car and realizes they must have a way to get into the auto shop after hours. Weevil admits that everyone who takes shop has made copies of the teacher’s keys. Veronica has Clemmons break into all the lockers in the shop and he finds some of the money ($3000) in a locker—including the fifty dollar bill with “Nancy” written on it. He also finds a bag full of pills. The locker belongs to Thumper.
Thumper’s locker also contains a wooden paddle with a bunch of numbers and letters carved (or burned) into it, which Veronica finds intriguing but Clemmons doesn’t let her get a very good look. Clemmons and the cops grab
Thumper on his way out of the carnival. Veronica sneaks into Clemmons’ office (she had duplicate keys made before he confiscated hers) to get a better look at the paddle with the numbers on it. She’s sure the numbers are some kind of code, so she uses the copy machine to copy them. She finds an upcoming test from Ms. Hauser’s Health class in the copier and runs into Jackie on the way out, asking if she’d like to see Ms. Hauser squirm.
Veronica forces a grudging apology out of Ms. Hauser, then shows her the test she found. Ms. Hauser says the only person who could’ve used her copier code to copy the test would be her student assistant, JB. Veronica 
suggests he might’ve been copying the test when he borrowed Ms. Hauser’s keys earlier, but JB says Veronica is just trying to sabotage him because he’s so close to beating her for the scholarship. Veronica tells them she’ll take JB into the hallway and when they return, he’ll confess. In the hall, Veronica shows JB the photo she took of the Triton initiation, which clearly shows JB as a member. She suggests that he arranged for the other Tritons to steak as a distraction so he could copy the test. She mentions the copier makes logs of every code used—which may or may not be a bluff—and threatens to post the Triton photo online under JB’s name, which would get him in deep shit with the Tritons (who are pretty intense with anyone who reveals their secrets). Or, JB can just confess and get it over with.
JB chooses the second option and admits he stole the test. Veronica notices a high heel shoe print in some glitter on the table and climbs up to find the rest of the missing money hidden in the ceiling tiles. Jackie suggests it
should be easy to find the culprit, since not many people wear heels to a carnival. Clemmons notices Ms. Hauser is wearing heels and whattaya know? They’ve got glitter on them! Turns out she’d been skimming from the carnival money long before she even gave Veronica the box, which means she lied about how much was in it. Clemmons takes her into his office, presumably to fire her ass. Veronica tells Madison to be happy, since the senior trip is back on. Of course, there’s not enough money for Catalina, so they’ll have to settle for Magic Mountain after all.
On the way out, Dick meets a hot woman who puts the moves on him. Logan 
walks Hannah to her dad’s car, having lined up a date. And what a coincidence … Hannah’s father is Dr. Griffith, the “witness” (and friend of the Fitzpatricks) who supposedly saw Logan kill Felix on the bridge. He recognizes Logan, but can’t say anything in front of Hannah. Meanwhile, Dick gets a surprise when his hot woman turns out to be a dude that Beaver hired off some website. Dick’s ready to pound Beaver, but Beaver says if he touches him he’ll suffer a hell of a lot worse.
At the office, Keith and Terrence are half-wasted and Keith’s still going on about what a fan he is. He asks Terrence one last time if there’s anything he wants to tell him and Terrence says no. Keith plays the tape Veronica made
of Sheriff Lamb blackmailing Terrence over his gambling debts and the favours he did for the guys he owes money to. Terrence admits that Ms. Dumas overheard the Fitzpatricks (when they came to collect on a debt) talking about how he’d once thrown an important game to pay of some of his debts. Keith is stunned, but agrees to take the case, saying he can’t believe Terrence Cook is capable of killing a bus full of kids.
At school, Veronica confronts Weevil and says she made up the thing about Nancy’s phone number on the fifty dollar bill. She knows Weevil set 
Thumper up (although Thumper was cut loose because the pills turned out to be Ephedrine), but she isn’t sure how he did it. Weevil admits he put the cash box in his niece’s backpack, she hid it in the ball pit before Veronica searched the pack, then retrieved it before Veronica had the ball pit emptied. He the hid the money and pills in Thumper’s locker (and had to go back later to add the incriminating fifty). Weevil asks why Veronica didn’t turn him in and she says she always preferred Magic Mountain over Catalina.