In Chap­ter 25, set in 1969, a crit­i­cal vis­it tran­spires at the sher­if­f’s office involv­ing Pat­ti Love Andrews, the moth­er of the deceased Chase. Dressed somber­ly, Pat­ti Love seeks updates on her son’s case, con­vinced that his death was­n’t acci­den­tal, giv­en his ath­let­ic prowess and intel­li­gence. The con­ver­sa­tion shifts toward a sig­nif­i­cant detail—Chase’s miss­ing shell neck­lace, a trea­sured item he was last seen wear­ing the night he died but was absent from his per­son­al effects at the coro­ner’s office. Pat­ti Love dis­clos­es that the neck­lace, a gift from the Marsh Girl with whom Chase had been involved, was not among the belong­ings returned by the coro­ner, propos­ing it as evi­dence of foul play.

Pat­ti Love reluc­tant­ly shares her sus­pi­cion with Sher­iff Ed and Deputy Joe, touch­ing on the vil­lage rumors of Chase’s affair with the Marsh Girl, even after mar­ry­ing Pearl. Her the­o­ry sug­gests the woman, known for sell­ing mus­sels and nav­i­gat­ing the marsh in a decrepit boat, might have mur­dered Chase out of jeal­ousy and tak­en the neck­lace as a token or evi­dence of her act.

The absence of the unique­ly craft­ed shell neck­lace, which should have been secure around Chase’s neck, piv­ots the inves­ti­ga­tion towards the Marsh Girl, now a poten­tial sus­pect. Ed and Joe spec­u­late on the cir­cum­stances lead­ing to Chase’s fatal fall, con­sid­er­ing the involve­ment of some­one famil­iar with the marsh­land’s covert ways, pos­si­bly lur­ing Chase to his death.

The chap­ter con­cludes with the deci­sion to pur­sue this new lead by ques­tion­ing the Marsh Girl about her where­abouts on the night of Chase’s demise and her con­nec­tion to the miss­ing neck­lace. The dia­logue between Ed and Joe out­lines the com­plex­i­ties of the inves­ti­ga­tion, marred by scarce evi­dence but reignit­ed by this tan­gi­ble clue, set against the back­drop of a com­mu­ni­ty’s sus­pi­cions and the murky inter­ac­tions between its inhab­i­tants.