In my Life

By t.f. hammill

Rebecca Stone a twenty-something amateur sleuth lives in a trailer park ( in Ocean Beach Ca) with a bunch of off-the-wall characters. She wants to broaden her life, Becky has always wanted to be a professional singer. She's done her share of backyard concerts with the local bands but now yearns for the legit spot-lite. At the suggestion of a neighbor an old rock and roller. Becky starts voice lessons with Cat a voice teacher in San Diego Ca. Little does she know that the teacher has an agenda of her own. With a new agreement on the cost of singing lessons Rebecca takes on the job of keeping Cats brother under wraps. Seems Danny Boy has secrets to hide. A super criminal drops into the story as do the police who Rebecca has often done CI work for. Rebecca has a unique gift she has second sight. She also has a relationship with her dead Great Aunt Nancy (a famous sleuth in her own right) and has a new friend in the form of a rather large Orange Tabby cat named Oliver. A gift form Great Aunt Nancy. Could Oliver be a framilier? Is he Nancy's spy. Will he help Rebecca in her endeavors?

• Language: English
• Publisher: t.f. hammill
• Release date: Jan 13, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224453429

Book preview

10/ 28/ 2018

11/ 09/ 2018

11/ 14/ 2023

01/ 12/ 2024

Dedication

For my editor Kathi Somers without who’s help big time I’d have

gone insane......

COPYRIGHT© 2023 T. F. Hammill all rights reserved. This book or any portion there of may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.

© 2023, T. F. Hammill. Rebecca Stone, In my Life 11/14/2023

PHOTO COVER CREDIT: Photo Lab  Made by Photo Lab    

Chapter #1

The Girl Can’t Help It...

This is a nutty world we all live in and I gotta tell ya reading the newspaper sometimes can blow me away. Not just the danger we all have to contend with like when you’re traveling or damn it just being out and about during the day can be unhealthy. But there’s that but, but it’s so easy to become content here in the park. You deal more one on one with people and their problems and stuff.

Getting back to the news rags. What is it with those people I mean is it these typos or does the writer not know how to use grammar. I paid attention in senior English why couldn’t they? Oh and on the whole their spelling is worse than mine. Thankfully I have spell-check, thank yooou Microsoft.

Once I peruse the front page. I skip back to the adult ads trying to spot a job for myself. When the end of the front page story caught my attention. The article was entitled Girls, girls, girls.  It would seem that a small group of female thieves had been doing armed robberies. Not in O.B. perish the thought but in L.A. where all the real street crime lives. Now that’s a way different story.

What nailed me what took me from the ads back to the front page and the beginning of the story was someone’s name a person a body out of the past, her nickname was Classy Patty. That name took me back when Patty and her friends lived here in the park, and close by was my Mom. Well,,,My mom lived with a few of them, in-between boyfriends. This was an all girl thing that at its core was Patty.

As much as I’d like to forget Patty and her band of thieves, well... I’ll just let it rest for now. Or so I thought..

The day was turning out to be a nice one and for a change I will be keeping an appointment at eleven o'clock. Sit back and put on your seat belts gang, yours truly is taking singing lessons. Yep I ramped up my game here and with my neighbor Alfred Floyd Tennyson I’ll be taking my first lesson today with a songbird (that’s what Alfred called her.) Okay a teacher that he knows and knows well. Whatever that means.

Right now it’s going up on ten so I should get my act together and jam down to meet my new teacher.

Thankfully my make-up is done so all I have to do is finish dressing and jump in my songbird, that’s my Camero. I am making payments to Lee on this beast of a car that I dearly love to death.

As usual my everyday uniform will do nicely thank you very much but because this person, oh her name is Cat I guess that’s Catherine but who knows these days. I a pro of sorts I should put on some good threads and make a good impression. After all this isn’t free. Yep I get to pay for it. All kinds of rules are getting broke today.

Getting back to my clothes, instead of a T- shirt I’ll do one of my better blouses. I have this cream colored one that has a high neck to it. For pants I’ll do this pair of stretch pants that look great on me. Makes my ass look all roundy and nice. Good for my ego.

As a rule I don’t wear a lot of jewelry. But today being what it is I’ve got these gold dangles or should I do hoops. The gold ones are a gift form my Mom, they’re really old they’re clasp backs so I can take them off easy if I have too.

I’ll take the hoops and stick them in my black bag along with my other staples of life. Like my stun gun and my Browning .25 that’s my Baby Browning. Don’t get me wrong there’s other stuff in there too. You know girl stuff but not as much as you’d think. I don’t exactly play by girls rules, never have.

For shoes, boy do I love shoes, but they’re so expensive. I have to admit that I’m not above getting a hot pair of kicks at the goodwill or a small resale shop here in O.B. Every so often my girlfriend D and I travel to L.A. and scourge shops up there.

That brings me to my Mom. Now Mom has had her own business for years and years. She buys and sells anything she can find a deal on. Being a sensitive like me she really can nail down the bargains. Its almost like stealing the way Mom does it. She can walk through a store and in minutes tell if there’s anything she wants there just by standing in the doorway. Some shops won’t let her in cause they know she’s up to something they just don’t know what it is.

One day we were driving down the street on our way out of town to cruse the bargain shops in the country town of Ramona. Its like thirty minutes north of O.B. As we drove down Voltaire street on our way to the causeway and the freeway. Mom is talking non stop when all of a sudden she hangs a radical U turn in the middle of the street. She floors her old beater of a car and swoops in to the curb just past a bargain store known as Flips. They hate Mom but she takes them in stride. A woman turns the corner at the alley. In her hands is a tote with something square in it.

Now this gets my attention, I turn to my Mom, the words barely out of my mouth as Mom opens the door and leaps out and walks toward the woman. Now I’m guessin that the woman or should I say target is in her fifties.

You are not going to ambush that old lady are you. She looks back at me as I roll down the window in the beater and repeat myself. She schusses me and with her index finger held low she wags it back and forth.

I know whats about to happen I have seen it done before not only by Mom but my Great Aunt, Nancy.

With more gushing and bravado than she needs she says to the lady.

Joan why its been ages. She opens her arms and the lady stops dead in her tracks looking a bit perplexed.

‘Joan, I I I’m not Joan." She replies she does this with a lot of grace and elitist aplomb.

Now I am mixed up, but not for long. I squirm in the seat I try to cover my face and not laugh. I have to hand it to her she just broke the ice. Not unlike a grifter my Mom steps back at the same time she reaches out to take the woman’s hand I am so sorry about that but you look just like my old dear friend Joan. That’s when she includes me in on this game. "Doesn’t she