Ava waved away her objections. “I realize, you said you weren’t sure if you’d hang around ’til then, but I’m just gonna pretend I didn’t hear that. You know, with Isabelle going off to college in August, I’ll need all the extra help I can get around here.”

Letty nodded in Maya’s direction. “Can we talk about this later, please?”

“Oh. Right. Anyway, we’ve got a guest checking into the efficiency this evening. She’s coming down from New York, and wasn’t exactly sure of her arrival time, so I told her if it’s after six she can just call my phone and I’ll meet her here and check her in.”

“How long is she staying for?” Letty asked, pulling up the Murmuring Surf’s booking page on the computer monitor. She clicked over to the page she’d designed for her old unit.

“She paid in advance for four days,” Ava said.

Letty frowned. “I thought we had a one-week minimum stay during the season.”

“Well, yeah, but since we just added the efficiency, I thought it would be okay to take a shorter stay. Just this once.”

Letty shrugged. “You’re the boss, but seems to me we’d be better off waiting for the weekend and booking a guest who’ll be here at least a week.”

“Now you sound like Joe,” Ava said. “It’s just four days. After this, yes, I’ll absolutely apply the one-week minimum stay.”

Ruth Feldman was not happy. “Ava, would you please look at this?” She held up a piece of faded and frayed plastic webbing. “Billie sat down on one of the lounge chairs by the pool just now and the thing collapsed. She could have been killed!”

Ruth and Billie were both dressed in their modest one-piece bathing suits and matching terry cover-ups. Ruth’s swim goggles were pushed on top of her still-damp steel-gray hair.

“Oh Lord,” Ava said. “I’m sorry, Billie. Are you okay?”

Billie Feldman turned around and displayed a mildly scraped ankle. “It could have been much worse,” she said. “I managed to catch myself or I might have broken a hip or something.”

“Okay,” Ava said. “Thanks for letting me know.” She looked over at Letty. “Could you please go over to the pool and drag the broken lounger over to the dumpster? I don’t want anyone else getting hurt.”

“We already took care of that,” Ruth said. “But Ava, the webbing on all those chairs is in the same condition. You need to do something before someone gets seriously injured.”

“I will,” Ava promised.

Maya peeked around the corner of the reception desk and gave a shy wave to the two older women.

“Hello there, young lady,” Billie said, leaning down. “What are you working on today?”