out her soft cry, the gulls appeared and circled above and around her shoulders. The large male, Big Red, landed and walked back and forth across her feet.
Chase stood a little distance away, watching as Kya disappeared into the spiraling birds. He hadn’t planned on feeling anything for this strange and feral barefoot girl, but watching her swirl across the sand, birds at her fingertips, he was intrigued by her self-reliance as well as her beauty. He’d never known anyone like Kya; a curiosity as well as desire stirred in him. When she came back to where he stood, he asked if he could come again the next day, promised he would not even hold her hand, that he just wanted to be near her. She simply nodded. The first hope in her heart since Tate left.
25.
A Visit from Patti Love
1969
A light knock sounded on the door of the sheriff’s office. Joe and Ed looked up as Patti Love Andrews, Chase’s mother, appeared shadowy and fractured through the frosted glass. Still, they could recognize her in a black dress and hat. Graying brown hair in a tidy bun. An appropriately dull shade of lipstick.
Both men stood, and Ed opened the door, “Patti Love, hello. Come on in. Sit down. Can I offer you some coffee?”
She glanced at the half-empty mugs, lip-drips running down the rims. “No, thank you, Ed.” She sat in the chair Joe pulled up. “Do you have any leads yet? Any more information since the lab report?”
“No. No, we don’t. We’re going over everything with a fine-tooth comb, and you and Sam’ll be the first to know if we come up with anything.”
“But it wasn’t an accident, Ed. Right? I know it wasn’t an accident. Chase woulda never just fallen off the tower by himself. You know what an athlete he was. And smart.”
“We agree there’s evidence enough to suspect foul play. But it’s an ongoing investigation and nothing definite yet. Now, you said you had something to tell us?”
“Yes, and I think it’s important.” Patti Love looked from Ed to Joe and back to Ed. “There was a shell necklace that Chase wore all the time. Had for years. I know he was wearin’ it the night he went to the tower. Sam and I had him over for dinner, remember I told you that—Pearl couldn’t come; it was her bridge night—and he had on the necklace right before he went out to the tower. And then after he . . . well, when we saw him at the clinic, he didn’t have the necklace on. I assumed the coroner had taken it off him, so I didn’t mention it then, and with the funeral and all, I had forgotten about it. Then, the other day I drove over to Sea Oaks and asked the coroner if I could see Chase’s things, his personal effects. You know, they had kept them for the lab work, but I wanted to hold them, just to feel what he wore that last night. So they let me sit at a table and go through them, and, Sheriff, that shell necklace wasn’t there. I asked the coroner if he had taken it off, and he said no, he had not. He said he never saw any necklace at all.”
“That’s very curious,” Ed said. “What was it strung with? Maybe it came off when he fell.”
“It was a single shell hung on a piece of rawhide that was just long enough to go over his head. It wasn’t loose and was tied in a knot. I just don’t see how it could’ve flung off.”
“I agree. Rawhide’s tough and makes a mean knot,” Ed said. “Why did he wear it all the time? Did somebody special make it for him? Give it to him?”
Patti Love sat silent, looking off to the side of the sheriff’s desk. She dreaded saying more because she’d never admitted that her son had been involved with marsh trash. Of course, there had been village rumors that Chase and the Marsh Girl had been involved for more than a year before his marriage. And Patti Love suspected even after, but when friends had asked about the stories, she’d always denied them. But now it was different. Now she had to speak out because she just knew that wench had something to do with his death.
“Yes, I know who made the necklace for Chase. It was that woman who boats around in that old rattletrap boat; has for years.