Veronica Mars/Papa's Cabin

Papa's Cabin
Season 3, Episode 15
Airdate	February 27, 2007
Production Number	3T5815
Written by	John Enbom
Directed by	Michael Fields
Stream
← 3x14 Mars, Bars	3x16 → Un-American Graffiti
Veronica Mars — Season Three

Papa's Cabin is the fifteenth episode of the third season of Veronica Mars, and the fifty-ninth episode overall. Keith, Veronica and Tim Foyle enter the home stretch of discovering who really killed the Dean when Mindy O'Dell and Hank Landry are placed in the sights of the sheriff's department. It is the final episode in the second arc of season three.

Starring: Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars), Jason Dohring (Logan Echolls), Percy Daggs III (Wallace Fennel), Ryan Hansen (Richard "Dick" Casablancas) (credit only), Julie Gonzalo (Parker Lee), Chris Lowell (Stosh "Piz" Piznarski) (credit only), Tina Majorino (Cindy "Mac" Mackenzie) (credit only), Michael Muhney (Sheriff Don Lamb) (credit only), Francis Capra (Eli "Weevil" Navarro) (credit only)

and Enrico Colantoni (Keith Mars)

Guest Starring: Patrick Fabian (Prof. Hank Landry), James Jordan (Tim Foyle), Jaime Ray Newman (Mindy O'Dell), Jesse James (J.D. Sansone), Dendrie Taylor (Mrs. Sansone)

and Ed Begley Jr. (Cyrus O'Dell)

Co-Starring: Brandon Hillock (Deputy Sacks), Robert Bastron (Student #1), R.J. Cantu (Student #2), Dianna Agron (Student #3), Tamika Katon-Donegal (Anchor Woman), Jennifer Blanc (Catholic School Girl), Benjamin Seay (Clerk), Richard Romero (Chief), Wayne Thomas Yorke (Insurance Agent), Chuck Raucci (Salesman), Nikki McCauley (Blue Stripper)

Plot Overview

Still in interrogation, Mindy O'Dell is being aggressively questioned by acting sheriff Keith Mars and eventually gives up the information she was holding back from Keith in his private investigation. Cyrus was the other man in the hotel room during the overheard argument. He threatened to sack Landry and stormed off to his office, where Mindy met him later in an attempt to talk him down. She gave him his Xanax prescription and left after arguing briefly. When she returned to the Neptune Grand, Landry was nowhere in sight. When she tells Keith that she'll be willing to testify against Landry in court, he lets her go with a warning not to leave town.

Mindy's promise for testimony leads Keith and his deputies to arrest Landry at Hearst. He's brought in for questioning and is told that Mindy flipped on him. Landry adds on to Mindy's memories of the night which hold devastating consequences for her if he were to divorce her, as he threatened in Landry's recounting of the events. When faced with the bloody clothes, Landry says that it must be Mindy who is trying to frame him because he was on his way home alone at the time of the murder. He has no alibi except for a mystery brunette who bummed cigarettes from him at a convenience store. Keith recommends that Landry get a good lawyer, because he has an impressive case against him. Later that day, Tim comes to see Landry and asks that he find who planted the bug on his phone and to find "that needle in the haystack."

Tim tries to search the Mars Investigations office for the bug that was taken off of Landry's phone, but he's an incompetent burglar and is quickly caught by Veronica, who was at the office late. Tim asks for her help because he's not good in the field and has no idea what to do about finding out if Mindy really framed him. At 3AM, Veronica and Tim head to the convenience store to question the clerk, but he doesn't give any solid help and says that the surveillance camera is just for show. Just when all hope is thought to be lost, two strippers walk in, one of which fitting Landry's description but neither of them smoke. They suggest that Tim and Veronica come back tomorrow because Tory smokes like a "big ol' slutty chimney."

The next day Mindy gets presumably a large life insurance check and uses it to purchase a yacht. Keith gets a call from the district attorney to tell him that she's missing, presumably vanished in her large boat. That night, Veronica and Tim return to the convenience store to question Tory. one of the strippers who comes by the store recognizes Landry from his picture and says that he did give her a cigarette that night two months ago. She is enough to get Landry out of jail and the investigation refocuses on Mindy. Veronica and Tim search for and find a CD of burned phone calls off Landry's phone. They discover the phone call from that night as well as Landry giving a poor reference to Pepperdine for Tim the next day. After bringing the CD to her father, she's informed that Landry has skipped town as well. He surfaces on the boat which Mindy bought that night.

Now faced with the possibility of Landry being Mindy's partner in the dean's murder, Veronica has been thumbing through all of Landry's calls until she finds one which refers to a place called "Papa's Cabin." Tim offers to get her into Landry's house because he still has a key. Tim finds a disposable cell phone in his garbage and Veronica coerces the man on the end of the last dialed phone to give up his address. The two detectives follow the address to J.D. Sansone and his mother, the stripper with the brown hair who alibied Landry. She's not actually a stripper, however, she was being blackmailed by Landry. If she didn't show up at the store at 3AM, he would revoke her son's probation using his powers on the juvenile court board. The two also bring Keith information on "Papa's Cabin," but while they're trying to figure out what state Landry's grandfather lives in, Keith makes a PlanetZowie search and finds a resort in Cabo San Lucas which was frequented by Ernest Hemingway.

In Mexico, Keith tracks down the resort and finds a boat off shore, which Keith and the Mexican federales board and find Landry babbling about how Mindy framed him. The two fought when he came about the boat and his hit her, causing her to fall overboard. He claims that he looked but couldn't find her in the dark water. Somewhere in the distance, O'Dell's corpse has washed up on the shore.

With Landry arrested, Hearst returns to somewhat normal. Tim asks Veronica to be his teaching assistant now that he's been handed all of Landry's classes. In class later, a student pushes Tim to talk about what happened with Landry, causing him to go off on the tangent about what happened. While he's recollecting the events of the murder, Veronica realizes that something doesn't add up. She asks Tim, in class, when Landry could have possibly called his blackmail subject if he was arrested and kept in jail without any time between class and the sheriff's department. Veronica works out that Tim is the actual culprit in the crime when she discovers a bug in her own phone. Tim is arrested, he confesses to the murder and Landry will be tried for manslaughter in the death of Mindy O'Dell.

Notes

The Dean's Death

• The man who was arguing with Landry in his hotel room was a very angry, gun wielding Cyrus O'Dell. Cyrus had no interest in killing Landry in the physical sense, but he did use it as emphasis for his bigger point: Landry would never teach again. He also threatened to divorce Mindy, who will get nothing because of a prenuptial agreement.
• Mindy wasn't in the lobby when Landry called her, she went to her husband's office to talk him down from following through on his threats. This was when she gave him his prescription for Xanax, although she insists that she gave him the bottle and not the individual three pills. Landry, however, claims that Mindy went to save herself, not his job.
• Landry's real alibi for the night of Cyrus' death is that he drove home alone, went to a convenience store to buy cigarettes and was asked to bum one by a brunette outside. The woman is eventually found and alibis him for the time of the murder.
• Mindy, at this point having collected upon the life insurance policy, has purchased a boat and fled town. She sent her kids to Surry, England, and is nowhere to be found. She later is found by Landry, who takes control of the boat. The two get into a fight and Landry hits Mindy, accidentally sending her overboard.
• Although Landry was right about being framed, he wasn't right about who framed him. Tim Foyle was the actual culprit. Tim was angry over Landry sinking his job opportunity with Pepperdine and concocted the whole plan. He bugged Landry and Veronica's phones and slipped up during his explanation about Landry's reasons for murdering the dean to the Criminology class.

Arc Advancement

Happenings

• Sheriff vs. Sheriff: Although he's only had the job for a day, Keith is already showing how different he is from Lamb. In the past, Lamb was notorious for arresting suspects in the middle of their peers. Notably, he arrested Weevil during his graduation ceremony and arrested Veronica in the last episode in the middle of class.

Characters

• Keith: Although Keith is the acting sheriff, there will be a special election in the coming weeks which could oust him from his temporary position.
• Parker and Logan: Now that Veronica and Logan are broken up, Logan has set his sights on Parker after he was roped into the Valentine's Day scavenger hunt as her partner.

Trivia

Allusions and References

• Gilmore Girls: Veronica refers to the two main characters of Gilmore Girls, a drama series about a mother and daughter who work through their turbulent lives using fast-paced pop culture reference. The series originally debuted on The WB before the merger with UPN. At the time that this episode aired, the series was the lead-in for Veronica Mars on The CW.

Veronica: I'm just trying to figure out which Gilmore Girl you are.

• Miami Vice: James Crockett and Rico Tubbs are the main characters from Miami Vice, a series about two detectives in Miami who frequently worked undercover to bust drug trafficking and prostitution rings.

Veronica: My name is Ms. Crockett. This is my partner, Mr. Tubbs.

Quotes

• Veronica: If you're wondering where I am, I'm hanging out outside a convenience store, eating Corn Nuts and watching strippers.

Keith: Are you doing drugs?

Veronica: No.

Keith: Good.