Picking up from the end of last episode, Keith Mars, Acting Sheriff of Balboa County, is questioning Mindy O'Dell about the holes in her and Hank Landry's alibi. Between the two men overheard fighting in her room, the car being checked out, the phone call, the Xanax, the bloody laundry, and the fact that Steve Batondo's prints were found on every key of O'Dell's keyboard—not just the eleven letters it takes to type "Goodbye cruel world" — something doesn't add up. Mindy, now clearly shaken, adds her retcon flashbacks to the narrative.
Cyrus O'Dell's visit to his wife and her lover were not a Dream Sequence: he did actually visit, brandishing his snub-nose revolver. He threatened to poison Landry's career—his most cherished possession—and Mindy left to try and calm him down. He wasn't at home, so she checked his office, where they had a brief conversation (she describes it as five minutes of him yelling) and she gave him his Xanax prescription. When she returned to the hotel, Landry was gone. Keith tells her not to skip town, and then departs... to Landry's classroom, where he has just told Veronica that his "disagreements" with Keith will not affect how he treats her. Evidently Keith feels the same way: he murmurs to Landry that he needs to arrest him, but that there's no reason he needs to do in front of a classroom of gawkers. Landry, answering courteousness with courteousness, dismisses the lecture early.
Landry, now that it's his turn in the interrogation room, gives his side of the story: the Dean also threatened to toss Mindy out in the cold, and she went to plead her case, not Hank's. The reason he wasn't at the hotel room when she returned was that he simply decided to go home. Of course, the bloodstained shirt is pretty damning evidence, and Landry realizes that Mindy's setting him up. Fortunately, he has an alibi: on his way home, he stopped at a convenience store to buy cigarettes, and gave two to a girl who dances at the club across the street—brunette, late thirties or early forties.
That night, Veronica finds someone breaking into Mars Investigations. It's TA Tim Foyle, who's been assigned by Landry to figure out who planted the bug in his phone, as well as to find the hooker (if possible) and verify Hank's alibi. They stake out the convenience store, discussing who they think actually did it and agreeing that Mindy probably hired Steve Batondo for the purpose. While Tim's interviewing the latest shipment of dancers, Veronica gets a call from Keith: Mindy has skipped town by buying a yacht and shipped her kids off to boarding school in England. Veronica barely has time to respond: another woman, brunette, late thirties or early forties, is late to the party. Yes, she does remember the man from Veronica's picture giving her some cigarettes. Why?
Landry, now walking free, thanks Veronica and Tim for their help, but Tim insists on going the extra mile: he wants to track down the recordings made by the bug in Landry's phone. Conveniently, the keys to Steve Batondo's house are in Evidence. There, they find a CD full of audio recordings. There are two from December 10: one between Hank and Mindy in the aftermath of Cyrus's visit, both sounding flustered but neither clearly homicidal; another from a professor at Pepperdine, who is inquiring whether Hank's TA, Tim Foyle, would suit a teaching job there. Hank is non-committal, claiming he wouldn't be a bad choice but not a good choice either. Tim doesn't look so happy at hearing his idol pooh-pooh him this way. Whatever the case, they deliver the first recording to Keith, which (in Veronica's opinion) places more suspicion on Mindy than anyone else. However, it's a moot point: Landry skipped town too.
Mindy wakes up on her yacht to find Hank at the steering wheel, claiming they need to talk.
By listening to the entire battery of recordings, Veronica comes up with the eponymous "Papa's Cabin," a place Hank and Mindy liked to retreat to. She calls Tim, and the two of them let themselves into Landry's house to track down this location—though first Veronica has to deal with Parker confessing that she and Logan are kinda-sorta-maybe dating. Veronica doesn't really have time for it. Neither, as it turns out, does Parker: she chooses sisters over misters and tells Logan they need to take some space. Logan, to his credit, accepts this much more maturely than he has in the past. Later, he approaches Veronica for permission to ask Parker out, and Veronica gives it.
Tim and Veronica hunt down a picture of Landry's grandpa, a picture of Hank and Mindy smiling together at a resort-like location, and a discarded pre-paid cellphone. Veronica hits Redial and then uses one of her many cover stories to get the name and location of Landry's last caller. When they arrive in person, it's a juvenile delinquent Hank Landry used to mentor... and his mother is the brunette, late thirties or early forties, who claimed to have gotten cigarettes from him. Landry blackmailed her into being his alibi by threatening to send her son to jail. Suspicion once again shifts to Landry, and Tim and Veronica set themselves to figuring out where Papa's Cabin is. After some amusing and impressive banter about clues, ranging from the types of trees to the color and text of license plates, Keith cuts to the chase by pointing out the picture of Ernest "Papa" Hemingway next to the bar at the resort.
Keith arrives at "Papa's Cabin," a resort in Cabo San Lucas, in the company of federal marshals, and they make their way out to Mindy's boat. Aboard, they find only a remorseful Landry: their "discussion" the previous night devolved into an argument (Landry's still sure she set him up), and he struck her, and she fell overboard, and... Sure enough, children on the beach are gathering around the corpse of Mindy O'Dell, lately washed ashore. Landry does admit to swapping the Dean's keyboards for the one with Batondo's prints on it.
Tim, back in his office, asks Veronica to be his new Teaching Assistant, now that he's Landry's temporary replacement. (Guess he doesn't need that teaching job at Pepperdine after all!) Veronica accepts, and Tim cracks a joke about whether she can pick up his dry-cleaning (like he used to do for Landry). In class, he's got what's probably a great first lecture planned, but it immediately goes Off the Rails: all anyone wants to talk about is the Landry case. So Tim takes the stage, starting with the classic means, motive & opportunity
, and continuing by pointing out that the more Landry had to improvise, the more things unraveled, and how much of the key evidence was disproved using methods not technically legal—particularly the lady who had been blackmailed into being his alibi.
This leads Veronica to a Plot Hole: When did Landry phone her? He never had access to a telephone until after she had already been found. Tim claims that Landry was simply that Crazy-Prepared, and knew he had nothing to lose: he already knew Mindy had sent her children away to England, clear proof that she was planning to flee. This leads Veronica to another Plot Hole: how did Tim know where Mindy was sending her children? That information was passed in confidence from Keith to his daughter. As Tim, clearly sweating now that he has to improvise, struggles to answer that, Veronica takes the battery cover off of her trusty T-Mobile Sidekick and discovers... a listening device.
Veronica raises her hand for a third and final time. Tim knew the O'Dell kids were in England. Whoever accomplished the murder must have bugged Landry's phone—which would tell him about the three-way argument at the Neptune Grand, that Dean O'Dell was drunk in his office, that Landry had refused to recommend Tim for the teaching job he so desperately wanted. Tim had access to Landry's dry-cleaning. "You murdered Dean O'Dell to destroy Professor Landry! Because he used you, then betrayed you! And when he said he had an alibi, you faked it, so you'd be sure he'd go down."
On the evening news, a reporter explains how Tim confessed to O'Dell's murder — prompted primarily her father — but ruminates how justice doesn't bring back the dead. Landry's still on trial too, for manslaughter, since he confessed to contributing to Mindy's death.
- Cassandra Truth: Landry keeps saying he's being set up. He's right, but not about who.
- Femme Fatale: Played with. Mindy is set up as one of these - the younger wife with a dark past, who seems fragile but has an extremely controlled and precise reaction to the terrible things happening around her. However, it's revealed that she really is an innocent victim in the whole mess.
- Frame-Up: Layers upon layers. Landry switched the Dean's keyboard with Mindy's ex-husbands, to take suspicion off himself and Mindy. He and Mindy each think they're being framed by the other. Ultimately, Tim is revealed to be framing Landry.
- I Never Said It Was Poison
- Jerkass: Landry poisons Tim's career and tanks a job opportunity for him for no particularly obvious reason beyond the hassle of finding a new TA to pick up his dry cleaning.
- The Paragon Always Rebels
- Shout-Out:
- When visiting the kid Landry used to mention, Veronica introduces herself and Ted as Crockett and Tubbs.
- Obviously, the Ernest Hemingway one.
- Sympathetic Murderer: Landry accidentally kills Mindy when they fight on her boat, because Tim's plot has convinced each of them that the other is trying to frame them.
- Visual Pun: Hiding the bug recordings in the DVD box of Taps.
