“How did Dad respond?”
“He went silent, which is how I knew he was boiling inside. The more I tried to get Carla to speak with us, the more agitated she became. She reached over and pulled a gun out of a drawer. Then she tugged a blanket off one of those old-fashioned cassette tape recorders. The spokes were moving. She’d been recording us. She told us that if we didn’t go down and bring up more gold until she had half of everything we’d found, she’d dial 9-1-1. At that point, Ed called her bluff. He told her that he’d rather dial 9-1-1 himself than let her have half.”
“And?”
“She started yelling. She pointed the gun at us with one hand and grabbed her phone with the other. Her hands were shaking. She was punching numbers into her phone and demanding that we go and get more gold. I admit, I panicked. When she looked at her phone, I rushed her. I grabbed the hand holding the gun. I tried to point it upward and take it from her. She had a death grip on it. Ed pushed his way between us. He took hold of the gun, too, then shoved me to the side. Ed and Carla struggled over the gun. One or both of them ended up pulling the trigger. The bullet went through her chest.”
For nine years, Finley had believed that her dad had killed Carla while cleaning her gun. She’d believed it because that’s what he’d told his attorneys, his jury, his judge.
Purposely, he’d misled them all.
Was Robbie misleading her now?
“Is that really what happened?” Finley asked. “If Dad killedCarla in cold blood so you two could keep all the gold . . . just tell me. Don’t sugarcoat it.”
His expression took on a twinge of hurt. “Ed had no intention of killing her. They were wrestling over the gun and it went off.”
She stared at him doubtfully.
“Finley. You know your father couldn’t kill anyone in cold blood.”
Did she know that?
She supposed that she did. He’d shown her steadfast love all her life. When angry, he kept his temper. He was one to talk things out bluntly. He was not one to resort to violence.
“Ed and I didn’t want to give Carla half the gold. But we didn’t want to kill her. We never would have wanted that. In fact, I couldn’t believe it as I watched her fall. Carla herself looked stunned, lying there on the carpet. The whole situation had escalated extremely fast. One minute, I was carrying gold up the stairs for her. Moments later, she was bleeding out.”
Finley tried to twist one of her rings around her finger and comprehended for at least the twentieth time since waking in the hospital that she didn’t have her rings. “How did you and Dad respond?”
“Ed administered CPR. I felt for her pulse. There was nothing we could do. She died very quickly.”
“And then?”
“Ed and I sat there. We were horrified. Shocked.”
“I know you called the police soon after she was shot. Why not tell them the truth?”
“If we’d done that, we’d have had to explain why Carla drew a gun on us. In which case, we’d have needed to come up with a plausible story that didn’t include the gold.”
“Or,” she said tiredly, “you could have told the officers the whole truth. About the gold. About all of it. I bet Dad was willing to do that. It was you. . . . It was you who wanted to keep it a secret.”
He inclined his head. “That’s fair. I did want to keep the golda secret. But not just for myself. If we’d told the authorities about the gold, we’d have been charged with stealing it. Plus, it would have been hard to make anyone believe, once they knew about the treasure, that Ed had killed Carla accidentally in self-defense.”
“So you two invented the story about Dad killing her while cleaning the gun. Instead of a guilty person who’d stolen gold and rushed at Carla, you became an innocent eyewitness.”
He nodded apologetically.
Her father had a long, long history of protecting Robbie. Through theBrothersbook, her dad had given her a glimpse into the bonds that tied him to his younger sibling. It was as if he was saying to her,This book shows a facet of who I am and what makes me tick. Can you understand?
“It’s now clear,” Finley said, “that Carla told at least one of her brothers about the Confederate gold before she died. When she was suddenly shot in the presence of her two accomplices, there’s no way her brothers would have believed it to be an accident.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Which is why Ken tried to hurt me. As retribution for what Dad did to Carla.”
“Yes.”
“Then you and Dad ... what? Hid the gold? Destroyed the cassette tape? And later split the treasure fifty-fifty?”
