In the stormy ambiance of Barkley Cove, 1969, the nar­ra­tive unfolds with Joe divulging to Sher­iff Jack­son a sig­nif­i­cant break­through in their inves­ti­ga­tion relat­ed to the night Chase Andrews died. Despite the dif­fi­cul­ty of track­ing down the reclu­sive Miss Clark, known for her elu­sive nature, Joe finds cred­i­ble tes­ti­mo­ny at Jumpin’s mari­na indi­cat­ing she was out of town on the cru­cial night. Tate Walk­er, a fig­ure from the past now work­ing at an ecol­o­gy lab, and Jumpin, a mari­na own­er with close ties to Miss Clark, both con­firm her absence in Greenville for a sup­posed meet­ing with a pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny. This rev­e­la­tion pro­vides her with a plau­si­ble ali­bi, shak­ing the pre­vi­ous­ly held belief of her pres­ence near the scene.

Post-lunch, Miss Pan­sy Price, bear­ing poten­tial­ly cru­cial infor­ma­tion, vis­its the sher­if­f’s office. Employed at Kress’s Five and Dime, she claims to have wit­nessed, along with her col­leagues, Miss Clark board­ing a bus that aligns per­fect­ly with the time­line prov­ing her absence from Barkley Cove on the night of Chase’s death. Miss Price’s obser­va­tion fur­ther strength­ens the ali­bi pro­vid­ed ear­li­er by Tate and Jumpin, com­pli­cat­ing the case and cast­ing doubt on the ini­tial sus­pi­cion towards Miss Clark.

The chap­ter show­cas­es the intri­ca­cies of small-town dynam­ics, the evolv­ing nature of evi­dence in a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, and the jux­ta­po­si­tion of com­mu­ni­ty per­cep­tions against tan­gi­ble ali­bis. Amid these rev­e­la­tions, skep­ti­cism remains, hint­ed by Sher­iff Jack­son’s mus­ings on the fea­si­bil­i­ty of Miss Clark’s trav­el logis­tics, sug­gest­ing the com­plex­i­ty in dis­cern­ing the truth in a tan­gled web of time­lines, rela­tion­ships, and local lore.