Okay, well, one step at a time. Literally, because the first thing she needed to do was get off the roof. She made her way to the rear edge, intending to climb down the ladder she’d left propped against the back of the building, and…what the hell?

She squinted down at the parking lot, which was empty except for her rental car. The ladder was gone. Not fallen over. Gone. Like, not in sight.

She reached into her pocket. It was empty.

She peered over the edge of the roof again. Not that she had expected it to magically materialize, but there was still no ladder in sight.

What was in sight was her phone—which she’d left on the hood of the car. “Crap.” She’d pulled it out to take some photos of a section of the inn’s exterior brick. It looked bad enough that she should probably get it repointed before listing the place.

4. Bricklayer. Mason? Whatever: brick person.

But the to-do list aside, this was extremely not good. She was stuck on the roof with no way to call for help.

Except, was that…?

“Mr. Andersen?” she called.

So much for lying low. Once Karl Andersen, the owner of Lakeside Hardware, realized she was here, so would the rest of the town. Back in the day, his store had pedaled more hearsay than hardware, functioning as a sort of unofficial town hall and as ground zero for a pack of meddling town elders. Some towns had beauty parlor–based gossip networks; Moonflower Bay had the hardware store.

Karl hadn’t heard her. He had to be in his eighties by now. She upped the volume. “Mr. Andersen!”

He looked around exaggeratedly.

“Up here, Mr. Andersen! On the roof of the Mermaid!”

Tilting his head back, he regarded her silently. She was expecting surprise, incredulity, but he just smiled. “Eve Abbott. I heard you were back in town.”

You did?

How was that possible? She’d told no one she was coming—she didn’t have any friends here anymore. But perhaps she had overestimated Jason Sims’s commitment to client confidentiality. And she’d just been thinking about how robust the town gossip network was.

She braced herself for questions. What was she doing here? Where had she been all these years? Why had she stopped visiting Lucille? What kind of monster great-niece was she?

But he only said, “What do you think of the new square? You should be able to get a good bird’s-eye view from up there.”

She glanced down. Moonflower Bay’s historic main street ran perpendicular from the bay for about four blocks before it widened into an open green space the town used for a weekly farmers’ market and for its two big annual festivals.