“I thought you were in Medea, too,” he said.

“I was supposed to be one of the Phoenician women. But I talked my way out of it because of the sleepover.”

“I’m surprised she gave up that easily. The only way I get out of it is that my work schedule never meshes with the rehearsal schedule.” He grinned. “I make sure of it.”

“I may have told her she could use the Mermaid for murder mystery theater as my way of getting out of it.”

He whistled. “That was brave of you.”

“Well, it’s looking like the place will be done early.” She shot him a look. She was mostly grateful for all his help, but she still felt weird about it. “So the place will just be sitting empty.”

“You won’t open it for the remainder of the year?”

“I don’t think so. I mean, I will admit that part of the rationale for doing this reno is to fetch a higher price when I sell. So in that sense, if it’s done early, opening it would make sense. But I don’t know that I want to bother doing it for a few months.” She felt a little guilty because clearly the spirit, if not the letter, of Lucille’s will was that she should actually run the place. But the late Lucille was going to have to settle for a reno. Pearl had told her several times that Lucille would approve of the work she was doing, so that made her feel a little better.

“Yeah, that’s smart. There have been developers sniffing around some of the historic properties around the towns on this part of the lake. Most people looking for second properties want beach access, of course, but there’s a little condo project going up in Grand View downtown where some douchebag bought up the old post office and tore it down.”

“Tore it down? You mean someone could buy this place and turn around and tear it down?” That had literally never occurred to her. “Then why am I spending all this money and energy on renovating it?”

She felt like an idiot that she hadn’t thought about the prospect of a new owner not keeping the Mermaid as an inn. Or not keeping the physical building at all. But of course she couldn’t sell the place and dictate how it was going to be used after the fact. Or could she? She would ask Jason. Maybe she should take the balconies off and see about getting it listed as a historic property.

Sawyer cleared his throat, drawing her out of her thoughts. Okay, well, she wasn’t going to solve any of this now.