1,392Wonder Woman was infatuated with Batman; Henry Higgins kept Eliza guessing. After a few miles down the bumpy road of life, what do Stephanie Plum and Ricardo Mañoso need and want? This story probably takes place after book 20, but with minimal spoilers. As you may guess from the summary, there is angst, yet also love.
Many thanks to jbspencer06, who has kindly helped me fix some confusions and omissions. Any errors that remain are mine alone.
I don't own the Stephanie Plum characters; nor do I make any profit, though this story and any original characters are mine. This story is purely for entertainment, so there may be errors.
A SECOND CHANCE
Chapter 1: Out of the Blue
Stephanie stood up and wiped her hands on the plaid hand towel while she looked for her phone. She could tell from the ringtone that it was Joe Morelli, which was a bit confusing. He had called to check in last week, the day after Halloween. So, she wasn't expecting to hear from him again, this soon.
Of course, she still appreciated that he checked up on her. And she'd come to really value their re-built friendship over the past seven years, but they both had their own lives. There wasn't a Rangers or Bruins game this evening. So she couldn't think of an obvious reason for him to be calling after 9pm on a Friday night.
Finally spotting the phone underneath a pile of homework on the table, she grabbed it and answered. "Hello Joe. What's up?"
"Hi Steph, sorry to call so late. Hope this is an okay time." She could tell from the tone of his voice that it wasn't an emergency, so she breathed out a quick sigh of relief.
"Sure, Joe. You know you can call any time. Are you looking for tips on how to hide the Halloween candy from Angelina so she stops climbing the walls?" She heard him chuckle. His daughter Angelina was almost four years old and had apparently taken the neighborhood by storm in her Disney princess costume. As Joe's wife Amanda described it, Angelina had amassed enough candy to stay awake for the next two years straight.
"No, but I'll take any tips you might have," he chuckled again. "Though, if I remember right, you used to hide your candy all over the house so nobody else could find it. So probably I shouldn't let you talk to Angelina for about four months."
She laughed at that. "Okay, I promise I won't say a word. But, I think it might be a Plum family genetic thing, so we'll all have to be kept incommunicado. Ever since the girls came to live with me seven years ago, I can't tell you how many times I found Halloween candy stashed behind the DVDs or in shoes. Not to mention Mary Alice's Easter candy, which I found under the sofa cushions in August one time."
"Hey! I heard that." Mary Alice called out from the dining room. "That was a long time ago."
Stephanie could hear Joe chuckle again. "Steph, if you guys had stayed in the Burg, I'd be really worried right about now. Just the fact that you're in Boston, still on the East Coast, makes me sweat sometimes." Steph saw Mary Alice in the kitchen doorway making a face. As Stephanie rolled her eyes in return, Mary Alice smiled and mouthed "Entenmann's" while pointing at the bottom oven door.
Stephanie couldn't help but laugh, at which point Mary Alice nodded smugly and ducked out of the doorway. "Mary Alice just pointed out where I stashed my not-so-secret emergency crumb cake last weekend. So probably you shouldn't let Angelina hang out with any of us until she's at least through adolescence."
At that, Joe erupted into full-blown laughter. "Steph, I can't tell you how good it is that some things never change. I take it all back. Remind your dad that you're all welcome on Christmas Eve when you visit over the holidays."
"I will, Joe. And that's really nice of you to invite my whole entourage, along with my dad. He told me that he really appreciated that you invited him to poker night last week. He's happy living with his sister, but he does get lonely for 'guy time'."
"Happy to, Steph," he said. "But that's not why I called." He hesitated, then continued slowly. "I got an odd 'person of interest' text about an hour ago for Boston, and wanted to let you know."
"Okay, Joe. I'll be happy to check into it for you. I'm not back in the office until Monday, but I have my Boston PD laptop here. They finally figured out that, even though I'm in the Community Liaison department, if they give me the right tools I can usually find my own missing contacts without taking detective time."
Joe snorted on the other end of the phone. "Steph, you could find a missing person using a needle floating on water and a Romper Room mirror. Having the laptop just makes it faster. I'm glad my old buddy Ryan finally figured it out." He paused again. "This time, though, I'm not calling for your help."
"Okay, Joe, then you may as well stop tippy-toeing around it, and just tell me." As Stephanie spoke, she watched as Mary Alice shepherded her younger sisters, Lisa and Sarah, into the kitchen. "Wait Joe, hold that thought just a sec." Stephanie reached down and whispered "goodnight" while giving each girl a hug and a kiss.
Standing back up, she reached out to Mary Alice, who was Stephanie's height in stockinged feet. "Goodnight sweetie," she murmured while Mary Alice said she was going to be upstairs reading until bedtime. As they trooped out of the room in a chorus of "good-night"s, Stephanie brought the phone back up to talk.
"Okay Joe, I'm back."
"So, are you sitting down?"
She rolled her eyes, and then pulled out a chair from the table. "If this is a sitting-down conversation I have to assume that, somehow, one of my deviant cousins is involved."
"Not exactly, Steph." He paused and Stephanie could hear him take a breath. "The report I received through the priority channel is that a man named Ricardo Mañoso has been picked up on an unlicensed firearms charge outside of Mattapan in Boston." Stephanie gasped and gripped the edge of the kitchen table.
Joe continued, "I checked into it briefly, and I'm pretty sure it's Ranger. All they'll tell me is that he was passed-out, maybe drunk, in a stolen car. They're holding him for questioning on a gang shooting last night in Dorchester, since that particular car was identified at the scene of the shooting and at least one of the guns in the car is the same caliber as the murder weapon."
"Oh my God, Joe." Stephanie exhaled, "Can you do something about it?" Even as she asked that, she knew it was a stupid question. But, she didn't know what to say. It felt like she was suddenly lost in a confusing dream. She hadn't heard the name Ranger in at least six years. At least, not outside of her own thoughts.
"Steph, Boston is way out my Trenton jurisdiction. Besides, I'm personally fine if he's locked up somewhere for the long haul." He took a breath, and before she could object he added, "Whenever Ranger ghosts into town these days he's a major pain in the TPD's side. We can never pin anything on him. But, after he vanishes again, we either find a group of gang-bangers dead by the waterfront or some foreign businessman has disappeared."
He snorted. "And, of course, we have to clear up the mess and take the heat for another unsolved crime."
As Stephanie sat, still reeling, Joe added softly, "But, I know you considered him to be your friend. I knew you'd want to hear this." He paused again, and then continued, a grimace clear in his tone of voice, "And, Steph, I really hate to say this, but I have my doubts on this one. You should know that Ranger has gotten a rep for occasional drinking and bar-fights, maybe twice a year. But not carelessness. Never carelessness."
They both were silent, momentarily, lost in their own thoughts. Finally Stephanie spoke up, "Joe, you're right, I'm glad you told me."
"By the way, Steph, it sounds like bail is going to be high. He's suspected of murder, even if they don't get proof tonight. There were drugs found in the car; enough to charge him with intent to distribute if they can tie them to him. And, he's a thorn in the BPD's side, too. We all want to hold him for questioning, for some reason or another."
She paused, drawing a pattern on the top of the kitchen table. "Do you know... does he still have anyone in Trenton?" She nibbled her lower lip, waiting for his answer.
"Not that I know of. When he sold his interest in Rangeman and they moved operations to Baltimore, like five or six years ago, I stopped seeing most of the guys I recognized. Obviously Hal McGuinnest works for us, now, but I asked him a few years ago and he said that Ranger never contacts him. And I don't think Ranger stayed close to that guy Cary Ramsfield—I think you called him Ram—since Ramsfield joined the DEA."
"But, you still see Ranger sometimes in Trenton?" She continued drawing a pattern on the table, not sure why she wanted to know.
"Yeah, a few times a year. But, never for long. As best we can tell, he must be based in New York somewhere. He comes here, he goes to Newark, he goes to Philadelphia, but always seems to disappear back across the Hudson. Who knows; maybe he lives in a tunnel or an abandoned tanker. We have no idea."
"Okay, well, I'm not sure it matters anyway." She stood up from the table. "But, thanks for calling me about this, Joe, I really appreciate it. A lot."
"No problem, Steph. Keep safe."
As they ended the call, Stephanie turned to the fridge, kissed her finger, and then touched a picture of Angie sitting in her Wellesley dorm room, adding another fingerprint smudge to the plastic sleeve holding the photo. "Good night, honey."
Since Angie had left for college on her scholarship last year, this had become an evening ritual that always made Stephanie feel better, no matter what had happened during the day. It reminded her, every night, that even the most challenging situations could work out. That every day was a new chance to reach out and make things better. That help could come from unexpected sources, just when you needed it.
Because, of all the girls, Angie had taken all the changes the hardest. The eldest of Val's four daughters, Angie was thirteen-going-on-thirty when both Val and Albert had died in the car crash that had changed all of their lives. And, she had rebelled hard. Thank God that Albert's family had stepped in, offering Stephanie this house to live in, along with day-to-day support for her sudden role as mother of four.
Angie, though, had gone from fury to silence when Stephanie had picked them up and moved them all to Boston. Albert's mother, a retired school counselor, had finally given Stephanie the key. She told Stephanie to close her eyes and listen with her ears and her heart, instead of watching Angie's stony face.
More practically, she enrolled them in a mother/daughter cooking class. It was an immense relief as Angie slowly made her peace over the learned, nightly ritual of cooking family dinners together. Stephanie eventually understood that Angie had needed to feel like one of the family's caretakers. Living with Val and Albert, she guessed it wasn't surprising that Angie had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility.
After that rocky start, Stephanie still cherished the day, a year later, that Angie came into her bedroom and said that the girls all wanted to change their last name to Plum. To Stephanie's surprise, the Kloughns had agreed that the girls should all finally have the same last name, and that Plum was a fine one.
Now Angie Plum was a successful college student, Mary Alice Plum was a high-school senior with a scholarship offer at U-Mass, while Lisa and Sarah Plum were flourishing in grade school. As she walked into the livingroom, Stephanie reflected that, overcoming misfortune, they had built a pretty good life together.
Then she sighed, putting that memory aside for a moment while she logged into her BPD laptop. After poking around, she found the station where Ranger was being held. She couldn't get any details, but managed to find out that he was being kept at least overnight. And she tracked down the senior officer on site, Detective Breyer, to get his approval to see Ranger as the night's interrogation was winding down.
After letting Mary Alice know she had to head out for a couple hours, Stephanie put on her heavy coat, picked up her purse, and went downstairs. She saw a light under the door of the first floor tenant, Mrs. Arshad, so also let her know. None of them were particularly surprised. Though it wasn't a regular occurrence, Stephanie's job as a community liaison for the BPD sometimes called her out at odd hours. Stephanie mused that this would be more challenging after Mary Alice started college. Something to think about.
Stepping outside, she pulled her coat tighter. This week they'd had a cold snap, reminding them all that it was November and time for winter. She could see her breath puffing in front of her in the cold, as she unlocked the car. While visualizing what a car-care fairy might look like, if she ever found one, she made a mental note to pull the shovel and snow gear out of the garage this weekend, and have the tire inflation checked. She wondered if there were any snow-shoveling elves living with the car-care fairies.
As she started the car, a very used Subaru Tribeca SUV, cold air started gusting through the heating vents and the CD player started up. She remembered, with a rueful smile, her dad telling her she should always turn them off before shutting down the car. "Yes dad," she thought, "and I should buy an American car and I should get it washed and detailed monthly."
Chuckling to herself, she turned off the fan, to give the car a chance to run for awhile so the heat could work, but left the music on. Humming absent-mindedly along with the CD, she drove down the somewhat unfamiliar roads to get to the Mattapan/Dorchester station. Suddenly, she realized that this was the "It Will Rain" song on the CD that she always fast-forwarded over.
She reached forward and skipped to the next one. Mary Alice had made this compilation CD for her, with songs from Bruno Mars, CeeLo, and Lionel Richie. However, this one song could still make her cry if she thought about it too deeply, and it's never good to go into work with running mascara.
She pulled into the employee lot, tapping her parking card to raise the gate. Looking around, she got out of the car, hitched her purse onto her shoulder, and made her way into the back entrance of the station.
As she walked down the hall to the prisoner holding wing, she spotted a number of officers she recognized. For a moment she was confused that it was so busy after 10pm, but then remembered it was Friday night. As her boss liked to say, "Friday night: The engraved invitation to the weekend drunk tank."
She stopped at the check-in desk, saying "I'm here to see Ricardo Mañoso; Breyer okayed it via email," as she pushed her ID under the transom in the bulletproof glass window. The admitting officer, Joe O'Reilly, checked his screen, then stacked and pushed the paperwork back through the transom. "You know the drill, Plum. Sign and return."
She started filling in the reason for her visit and, with sweaty hands, signed the various forms. She'd done this dozens of times before, but this time it felt like she was watching herself from outside. Then, as she looked at the admitting mug shots to confirm she was visiting the right prisoner, it felt like all the air had escaped the room.
Ranger.
After seven years, his face still stopped time for her. Front and side views—with a number—it was so incongruous. But, it was him. A bit disheveled, a bit roughed up. More than a five-o'clock shadow grizzling his face. But, yet... it was him. She stood, transfixed, staring at his eyes, which glared from the photo with all the dark intelligence she remembered, yet none of the humor.
She was interrupted in her thoughts by O'Reilly, on the other side of the glass. "Plum, you know that asshole?" She watched as he put down his mug of coffee. Stephanie knew that O'Reilly basically chugged coffee for his full shift to stay sharp. A few years from retirement, he was a fixture at this station. She mused idly that he was somewhat like the old-fashioned vending machine over against the far wall. She focused on his coffee, filled with milk and sugar, as though it held the answer on how to proceed as if this were all normal.
Apparently unaware of her state of confusion, O'Reilly continued, "Heck, Plum, you're the reigning champ at getting juvies to confess to misdemeanors, so as we can get them into halfway house programs and off the streets." He stopped, brushing his hand across his bottle-brush crew cut. "But if you can get that stone-faced banger to confess, the whole department will take you to Union Oyster House."
She grimaced, handing over the final signed form and her ID through the transit in the glass. "Ugh, no need." She'd tried raw oysters before, and once truly was enough. He buzzed her in, and she handed over her coat, purse and car-keys, and stood to be frisked and wanded. She mumbled to herself, "Sheesh, when did I become one of the guys? Oysters? Anyhow, I'm more of a Bella Luna or House of Pizza kind of gal."
She realized that her inner dialog tonight was just a way to distract herself. To keep from thinking about who was on the other side of the closed interrogation-room door that the duty officer was unlocking. As the door swung open with a slight squeak, she stood for a moment in the doorway, steeled herself, and then walked in the room.
She felt it immediately: The tingle that raced along the back of her neck whenever she had felt him near. "Ranger, it is you." She stopped again, in wonder, as Ranger looked up. Still exuding the grace and power of a wild panther, even wearing an orange jumpsuit and with his arms shackled to the steel crossbar on the table. She saw something glimmer in his eyes, like a spark that leapt across the void of the room.
She paused for a beat, just feeling herself breathe, watching his beautiful, complex, dangerous face. Seeing her missing friend peering from his brown, intense eyes. Then, his lips lifted slightly in an ironic smile she knew so well. Stunned, she suddenly wondered why she had never before seen that this particular smile was a mask. If she ignored it and looked only at his eyes, they were anything but expressionless.
After a few seconds that seemed like an eternity, he got his eyes under control and nodded at her. "Steph. It's been awhile," he paused, his eyes again momentarily at odds with his world-weary, knowing expression.
He raised one eyebrow, his barely-there smile intact. "Come to gloat?"
To be continued…
Author's Note: At the point when this story was written, the identity of Val's fourth child had not (yet?) been provided in the JE books. In this story, she is named Sarah.