Sunset Beach by Mary Kay Andrews

 Drue is not having a good year. She blew out her knee kite surfing. Her mother just passed. And now she is forced to go work for her estranged father in his law office--where she discovers, to her dismay, that he is now married to an old frenemy of hers from grade school, who is the office manager of the firm. The only bright spot is that she discovers that she has inherited her grandparents' old cottage on Sunset Beach, site of many happy childhood memories. The house isn't in great shape, but it's a place of her own, so she's happy. 

While working at her menial job at the law firm, she comes across a case her father settled as a worker's compensation case--even though a young single mother was murdered on the job. Drue is convinced there were some kind of shenanigans going on--either at her father's firm or at the hotel where the victim worked--which resulted in the low settlement. So she starts to investigate on her own. Then she finds a box full of newspaper clippings about a woman from the area who had simply vanished one day 40 years ago--and she starts looking into that case too. 

It was an engrossing story of a woman trying to rebuild her life and her relationship with her father while trying to figure out a plan for moving forward. I liked the characters and the sense of humor in the writing. Good beach book.