Disclaimer: JE owns nearly all of these characters. I'm just having fun.

A/N: I continue to be very grateful to latetolove for her patience, her encouragement and her superb editing skills. She took time away from her own projects to help me with this story.

Big hugs to Margaret Fowler who pointed me in the right direction.

Chapter 8

Ranger's POV

I asked Connie to meet me at the diner where she had first arranged for me to meet Stephanie. She arrived 10 minutes early, but I was already there, seated in the booth that abutted the back wall and had a clear view of the door. Connie slid across the red leatherette bench seat opposite me, tugging on her black and white polka dot skirt so it didn't ride up indecently. Indecent was a relative term in the Burg.

"Hey, Ranger. When did you get home?" she greeted me.

"Night before last."

She gave me an appraising look. "You still in one piece?"

I shrugged. "Mostly. I still have all of the important parts." Connie blushed but still managed to give me an eye roll.

"RangeMan still taking Stephanie's skips?"

"For now."

Connie slid three files across the table to me.

She chewed nervously on her lower lip. "She's not undercover, is she, Ranger?"

"Tell me what happened after I left."

She sighed. "You're not going to tell me, are you?"

With Connie, information was currency. She didn't like to give any away without getting something in return. For now, though, she was just going to have to let me run a tab. I didn't want her recollection of events to be biased, sorted and filtered by what she thought might have turned Stephanie Plum into Stephanie Manoso. It was going to take some skillful persuasion to extract information from Connie while giving her little of substance in return. Fortunately, I was trained in persuasive tactics.

So I flashed her a 200-watt smile and placed my hand over hers on the table between us. "Connie, please tell me what happened after I left."

"Damn, Ranger. That's not fighting fair." She extracted her hand from mine and fanned herself with one of the files. "There's really not much to tell. No one firebombed her apartment or blew up her car. No crazy stalkers, unless you count Horace."

"Horace?"

"Horace Smith, aged 37. A balding podiatrist who has an office in the strip mall on Liberty."

"He was a skip?" Damn, Connie was making me work for this.

Connie smirked. "Horace was a blind date."

Blank face firmly in place, or so I thought, I repeated, "Blind date? Stephanie went on a blind date?"

Connie giggled. "I saw that. Your reaction time with the 'nothing ever bothers me' face was a little slow. Was that a little flash of jealousy? You don't like the idea of Stephanie on a date with another man, do you?"

Suddenly, I wished I was back in Kazakhstan, Trapped in a godforsaken yurt by a friggin' blizzard. No way out until the spring thaw.

"Just tell me about Horace," I said as impassively as I could.

Connie relaxed and dumped a packet of Splenda into her black coffee and stirred. "It was really an accidental blind date as far as Steph was concerned. Val and Albert invited her out to dinner and this guy was there. He and Albert were on the same Frisbee team in college."

"Frisbee is a team sport?"

Connie sipped at her hot coffee and gave a world class eye roll. "I know, right?"

"So anyway, Steph managed to excuse herself from dinner before dessert. She told this guy she was diabetic, and she couldn't even stand to be around sugar. She said she had to go home and take her insulin."

I felt my lips quirk up in an almost smile. My Babe never failed to disappoint. "So Horace couldn't read between the lines?"

"Absolutely not. The next day, he sent a dozen roses to the bonds office with a note telling her that she had beautiful toes and he wanted to spend more time with them."

"Was that the end of it?"

"Nope. Two days later, there was a box of diabetic chocolates and an invitation written in fancy calligraphy to stop by his office for a foot massage." Connie grimaced, like she had a bad taste in her mouth. "For the record, diabetic chocolates are disgusting."

"So did the guys get involved and shut him down?"

"Uh, no." Connie was laughing now. "Nothing like that. Steph took care of it just fine on her own … at least she did with a little help from Lula."

I raised one eyebrow at Connie and waited for her to continue. The key was to get her to start talking. Once she did, she didn't stop.

"Steph sent Lula over to Horace's office with the invitation. Lula explained to Horace that she was Stephanie's girlfriend and they share everything. According to Lula, an invitation to Stephanie was exactly the same as an invitation to her, and she was more than ready for a foot massage!"

"I'm guessing that Lula got her massage and the Horace got the message."

"Damn straight!" Connie agreed.

"How did Morelli react to her blind date?"

Connie suddenly looked more serious. "Joe hasn't been around much. A few days after you left, Steph put the brakes on, telling him that she needed some space to figure out what she wanted to do with her life."

"How'd Morelli do with that?"

Connie shrugged. "Hard to say."

"They fight about something?"

Just then, the waitress appeared with our order. Egg white omelette for me and blueberry pancakes for Connie. Connie poured syrup over her pancakes and took a bite before she answered me.

"Don't know. If they did, it wasn't a public show." Pino's had hosted its fair share of Plum vs. Morelli.

I quirked an eyebrow at Connie, urging her to continue.

"Look, I couldn't really get anything out of her and neither could Lula. A couple nights after you left, they went to Rossini's for dinner—"

"Rossini's?" I interrupted. "That's not exactly Morelli's style."

"Nope," Connie agreed. "It's not. But he had the rib eye and Steph had her usual Fettuccini Alfredo with sausage. They shared a bottle of wine, and they got dessert to go."

"To go?"

"I'm guessing they went back to Morelli's, but I don't think Steph spent the night. She just didn't have the look to her the next day-" Connie broke off suddenly.

"It's OK, Connie." I said. "I know the look you're talking about." I had seen that look on her face plenty of times when she was living with Morelli. Hell, I had put that look on her face a few times myself. I felt oddly relieved that she apparently hadn't slept with Morelli that night.

"That's all I can tell you," Connie said. "Like I said, she said she told him she needed some space and then, as far as I know, she really didn't see him except in passing when she dropped off a skip."

"Tell me about the last skip she brought in," I encouraged Connie.

Connie hesitated and toyed with a piece of pancake, dragging it back and forth in the syrup that had pooled on the plate. "Ranger, you know that I do my best to make sure she and Lula don't get in over their heads."

I nodded.

She reached into the red patent leather brief case that matched her shoes and pulled out another file. "Karl Risen. Arrested for beating his wife's car with a tire iron after she told him she wanted a divorce." Connie paused. "Prior to his arrest, he had steady employment and no priors. Specifically, there were no domestic complaints." She twisted her hands in her lap. "You know I would never knowingly send Steph into a dangerous situation, right?"

"Connie." We both know dangerous situations find Stephanie. "Just tell me what happened that day."

"It had been a slow month for bonds in her range. The usual players … Dougie for selling counterfeit purses, Eula for vagrancy. I let Tank know she could probably use some office work but asked him not to let on that I had called. Anyway, Steph showed up at the office around 9:00. I remember teasing her about being early-"

I raised one eyebrow at Connie. Again.

"Early for Steph," Connie clarified. "She had even stopped at the Tasty Pastry and picked up a dozen doughnuts." Connie tapped her fingernails on the table nervously.

"Go on," I urged her. I tried to sound encouraging rather than impatient, but I'm not sure I was very successful.

"So the skip's last known address was the home he shared with his wife. Steph didn't think he would be there, of course, but she thought it might be worthwhile to swing by and talk with Mrs. Risen. But according to Lula, they went into apprehension mode when they saw the skip's car parked on the street in front of the house. Lula said Steph knocked on the front door while she went to cover the back." Connie closed her eyes, as if trying to remember every detail. "Apparently, Karl decided this time he would use the tire iron on his wife. The front door wasn't locked, and so when Steph heard the wife crying for help, she entered the house."

"Did the skip try to hurt her, too?" I interrupted.

"No, thank goodness. He tried to take off through the back door, and Lula stunned him." Connie paused. "Steph did CPR on the wife. She was hurt pretty badly … multiple broken bones, including a broken rib that punctured a lung. Eddie Gazarra said Steph saved her life," Connie finished quietly.

"Connie," I said. "Anyone would be traumatized by seeing that sort of abuse. How did Stephanie cope?"

"She was pretty shaken up," Connie admitted. "If it hadn't been January, I think she would have taken off for Point Pleasant. Instead, she told me that she was going to spend the rest of the week doing searches from her nice, quiet cubical at RangeMan. I haven't seen her since."

"Has Steph ever been the victim of domestic violence? Was that a factor in her relationship with Orr?"

"Not to my knowledge," Connie said. "From what I remember, Steph and the Dick turned divorce into a spectator sport. It's widely believed that Steph's airing of her husband's dirty laundry ruined any chance he had of a career in politics. Hard to believe that if abuse occurred, it wouldn't have made it into the divorce petition."

I nodded. Hell, Steph hadn't just aired Orr's dirty laundry. I heard that she'd piled it in their front yard and started a bonfire with it, along with the remnants of the infamous dining room table. "I'll check if out anyway," I replied.

"Joe?" asked Connie tentatively. "I mean he's always seemed like a good cop and a decent man but he has a scary family history. He grew up watching his dad beat on his mom."

I felt my gut twist as I remembered the sadness in my Babe's eyes as I sent her back to Morelli. I was convinced that she was safer with him. The thought that I had sent her back to someone who had hurt her was too much to contemplate.

"Did she ever hint that Morelli was physically abusive, Connie?"

Connie thought for a moment. "No, nothing like that. But you know they both have Italian tempers, and their fights were legendary around the Burg. They fought about her job, they fought about Grandma Bella, they fought about Joe's undercover work with Terri Gillman, they fought about …." Connie trailed off uncertainly.

"Say it, Connie."

"They fought about you and her work at RangeMan," she finally said. "Joe knew about the alley."

He hurt her, and it was all my fault.

As I threw some bills on the table to pay for our breakfast, my phone rang. "I hope you're headed back to Haywood," Tank said tersely.

"Problem?" I asked.

"Problems. Morelli's in the first floor conference room and he's ready for a fight. Celia's in Steph's office, and she's not happy."

"Babe has an office?"

Tank sighed. "Yeah, man. Stephanie Manoso has an office. We converted the secure conference room at the end of the hall. It was the best I could do on short notice."

"I'm on my way."

"Ranger, " Tank sounded uncertain. "That's not all. Rodriguez is waiting for you in your office."

That can't be good, I thought.

"Nah, man," said Tank. "No way at all this can be good."