My name is Billy Jo and I’ve just had awful news. PD is retiring! PD is a detective, and I work for his agency called Rosedale Investigations. My lovely (and free) apartment is upstairs. I’m twenty-one now, but was living in my car until two years ago when PD tracked me down, gave me a job & a place to live. He and my grandfather had been buddies during their Army service in Viet Nam and unbeknownst to me, PD promised to look after me when Grampa learned he didn’t have long to live.

I was seventeen, and a junior in high school, when both my mother and grandfather died. I never knew my father, and my grandmother had passed away years ago. Mom and Grampa were my whole family. I still don’t know, and am afraid to ask, why it took PD so long to find me. But, when he finally appeared at the pizza place I was waitressing—asking for a girl named Billy Jo Bradley—little did I know that the old guy was my knight in shining armor. Now he was retiring. Would it mean I would lose my job? My apartment? Was I about to lose my second family?

Grampa was already in the hospital and very ill when I came home from school one afternoon to find the apartment dark. Tiptoeing down the hall, I opened my mom’s bedroom door. The curtains were shut and she was asleep. I couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t working. A month later, she said was going into the hospital for a cosmetic procedure. When the surgeon emerged from the OR, he told me she’d had a heart attack on the table and didn’t survive.

“But, it was only a cosmetic procedure?” I said, struggling to absorb his words.

“That may have been what she told you, dear, but your mother had metastatic ovarian cancer and only months to live. It was blessing she died today.” Then seeing my face, he said, “Not for you, of course. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

I was still reeling from losing both of them when the landlord knocked on our door.

“You haven’t paid the rent,” he said looking at me like I was the dumbest girl on the planet. “You, young lady, are a squatter. I’ve found a new tenant and I want you out of here today.”

“But, where am I supposed to live?” I sounded (and felt) pitiful.

“Not my problem, girl,” he said. “Get your stuff out by five o’clock.”

When he left, I looked all around my home feeling desolate. I feared leaving the place would mean my final memories of mom and grandpa would vanish. Tears ran down my face as I grabbed a plastic trash bag and stuffed my clothes inside. I added my winter jacket, a puffy quilt and my mom’s pink flannel nightgown. Lifting it to my face, I inhaled a trace of her perfume. Sobbing, I went to the kitchen. There wasn’t much, but I found a loaf of bread, a jar of jam and peanut butter.

Walking out to the parking area, I put the clothes and food in the back seat. Then, taking a final look at what had been my home for as long as I could remember, I drove off. That night was the longest of my life. I woke up shivering in the gray morning light and for a moment didn’t know where I was. Then I remembered. I was homeless…and an orphan. Was it all happening again?

The Family Man, A Rosedale Investigations Mystery Book #4
Genre: Private Investigator Mystery
Release: January 2024
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase Link

A woman approaches Rosedale Investigations to report her husband missing. Then another woman arrives to report her husband is missing. When the team sees the photographs of James Browning, they realize it’s the same guy; they have a bigamist on their hands. Detective Wayne Nichols locates Browning’s car at the local airport and learns the man’s been subpoenaed to provide evidence in the trial of a decade-old murder of a police officer-a shooting Browning witnessed.

A second client, Hilary Broadchurch-Miller believes her brother, Grant, is being blackmailed by Aimee, his yoga instructor. He had earlier pledged to cover the cost of sending Hilary’s sons to college and she’s afraid he might renege on that promise. When Billy Jo interviews Aimee, she denies having an affair and is shocked when accused of blackmail. However, when Billy Jo checks the Venmo app, she discovers Grant has been giving Aimee money for two months. Something is definitely going on.

This one is a page-turner with two wives who don’t know about each other, a man who may or may not have a daughter, and a final 4th of July party where all the strands of the tale come together.

Meet the author
Lyn Farrell is the penname of Lyn Farquhar. Lyn is a retired professor from Michigan State University where she worked for 35 years as Director for Residency Education for the medical school. After retiring, she wrote a 7-book series with her daughter Lisa called “The Mae December Mysteries.” Subsequently, she went solo, writing the 4 book “Rosedale Investigations” series of which “The Family Man” is the 4th and last. She’s now working on a new book called, “In the Dead of Winter,” set in northern Michigan. Lyn is head of the MSU Creative Writer’s Group, President of the MSU Community Club, and serves on the Board of the One Room Schoolhouse Assn. She has two Cavalier King Charles Spaniels to whom she is devoted and a famous grandfather whose art graced the covers of the Saturday Evening Post. She is always on the look-out for his paintings. Lyn is widowed, a mother, grandmother of 12, and soon to be a great grandmother.