Chapter Nine
At precisely 9:42 A.M. the Citation X touched down at Charlotte Douglas International Airport.
Toots hired a limousine to drive them to Pine Shadows, the assisted-living facility where Margaret Florence Dabney awaited them. Once they’d made the decision to travel to Charlotte, Goebel contacted Ted Dabney, who then contacted the administrator at Pine Shadows and made arrangements for them to visit his aunt.
The drive from the airport to Pine Shadows took forty-five minutes, during which Sophie reviewed the list of questions she’d prepared on the short flight. Toots occupied herself by sending text messages to Abby and Chris. Mavis was content to view the passing scenery. Ida dozed, off and on.
As soon as they arrived at the facility, Ida perked up. She took a mirror from her purse and reapplied her lipstick, a soft pink from Seasons. “I do wish I’d had more sleep. These circles under my eyes are terrible. Do any of you have a tube of concealer?”
“I barely had time to shower and change,” Toots said, rummaging through her purse. “Try this.” She handed Ida a tube of Maybelline concealer.
Ida acted as though she’d been burned when she saw the brand. “Really, Toots.”
“I’m not particularly fond of Seasons’ concealers. They’re too thick.”
“I’ll make a note for my chemists,” Ida offered dryly.
Gone was the pathetic woman possessed by an evil entity. Ida had perked up as soon as she’d received a phone call from Daniel right before they left Charleston. As usual, a man made all the difference in her life.
The limousine pulled into the circular drive and stopped. Toots was paying the driver big bucks to wait for them. No one knew how long they would be.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” Toots cajoled. “I feel good about this, Sophie. What about you? Anything churning in your gut?”
“Not yet.”
The four entered the reception area, where they were greeted by a young woman who introduced herself as Anna. She wore her dark brown hair pulled back in a low ponytail. Dressed in a dove gray business suit with a pale yellow blouse, she exuded professionalism. Her bright blue eyes were clear, alert. “If you all will follow me, I’ve arranged for Ms. Dabney to speak with you in one of our conference rooms.”
They followed her through a maze of long hallways. Pine Shadows looked more like a luxury hotel than a retirement center. Thick gold carpet softened their footsteps. Plush chairs with side tables invited all to sit and relax. Vases of fresh flowers were placed at the entrance to each room they passed. Anna stopped when they reached the end of another long hallway.
“Ms. Dabney gets through her days by following a strict routine. It’s about time for her lunch, so I’ve asked the staff to provide you with a meal as well. I hope you enjoy your visit. Now”—Anna held one hand with the other—“let me introduce you.”
Margaret Florence Dabney sat next to a window overlooking the manicured lawn. She turned away from the window as soon as the door opened. “Anna?” she asked in a surprisingly strong voice.
“How are you today, Margaret?” Anna questioned.
“I’m the same as I was yesterday, and the day before that. At my age, very little changes.” Margaret Florence Dabney had a sense of humor. She returned her gaze to the window.
Anna smiled. “Your guests are here. They’re joining you for lunch.”
“Then I feel sorry for them. Please introduce yourselves. I may be blind, but my sense of smell is excellent.”
Sophie wasn’t sure what she expected from Margaret Dabney. Certainly not the lively woman sitting in front of her. “I’m Sophia Blevins.”
“Sit down then. And your friends? Do they have names?”
“Toots, Mavis, and Ida. We’ve been friends since we entered the seventh grade.” Sophie motioned for the three to speak up.
“Ms. Dabney, I’m Teresa Loudenberry. My friends call me Toots.”
Margaret nodded.
“Mavis Hanover. I own a funeral parlor.” Her eyes doubled in size when she realized how silly she must sound. Still, Mavis was proud of her success.
“A noble profession, don’t be ashamed,” said Margaret.
Mavis beamed.
“There is someone else here,” Margaret stated. “She’s wearing a musky perfume.”
“Ida McGullicutty,” she said as she walked toward Margaret, who was sitting by the window in her wheelchair, and took her hand.
“Pleased to meet you, Ida,” Margaret said as she shook her hand. “I’m in this wheelchair because I’ve broken my hip—twice.”
“I’m so sorry,” Ida replied.
“It is what it is,” Margaret said in a voice without an ounce of self-pity.
Anna cleared her throat. “If you all will excuse me, I will let you enjoy your visit. Lunch will be served at one o’clock.”
“Anna is very efficient,” Margaret explained. “Pine Shadows would not survive without her.”
Toots sat down in a soft, butter-yellow chair. Ida and Mavis sat on a matching sofa across from her.
An awkward silence ensued. Margaret Dabney appeared unfazed by their lack of conversation, but Sophie guessed there weren’t a ton of lively conversations that took place here at Pine Shadows. She removed the silver bracelet from her purse and rubbed her thumb against the intricate scrollwork. “Did your great-great-nephew explain why we’re here?”
“Only that one of you lives at Dabney House.”
Sophie thought of the phrase “like pulling teeth” as it applied to Margaret. When someone reached the ripe old age of ninety-four, Sophie supposed, she didn’t have to speak up if she chose not to. “My husband and I bought the house from Toots. She purchased it from Ted several years ago.”
Margaret turned away from the window to face them. Sophie was stunned. Her eyes were completely black, colorless. Thin gray hair barely covered her pale pink skull. Her hands looked dry and parched. Deep blue, purplish veins stood out against her white skin. Mentally vibrant, physically she was fading away. Sophie felt a well of pity gurgle up for this old woman who, according to Ted, had spent her entire life in one institution after another. Suddenly, she was glad they’d made the trip to Charlotte.
“What do you want to know?” Margaret asked.
Okay, Sophie thought, this isn’t going to be hard. She removed her list of questions from her purse. “I wrote these down on the flight over, but I’d rather you tell me your story.”
“Of course. After lunch, we will talk.”
Sophie glanced at her watch. Lunch was ten minutes out. “If that’s what you want.”
Again that phrase “like pulling teeth” flashed through her mind. She walked over to where the others were sitting. “She only speaks in single sentences. We may be here for a while. She wants to eat lunch first.”
Toots raised her brow, grinning. “We’ll do whatever she wants, too.”
Sophie nodded. “I’m in no rush as long as our evil spirit doesn’t decide to take possession of Ida while we’re here.”
“Mavis and I will watch over her while you question old Ms. Dabney. You know, something tells me that if we whisked her out of this place, we could show her the time of her life. Can you imagine being . . . forget it. It’s simply too depressing.”
“Don’t even think about it, Toots. She’s blind and in a wheelchair. And way older than us, and we’re already ancient.” Sophie teased Toots about her age constantly, but they both knew they could easily take ten years off, courtesy of Seasons Miracle Cream.
The door to the conference room opened, followed by a woman pushing a rolling table. “Miss Maggie, I was so happy when Anna told me you had guests for lunch. I asked the kitchen to make your favorites today.”
Margaret smiled, showing teeth that, while yellow and gray, were still hers. “Thank you, Dolly.”
Dolly was a large black woman with a grin as wide as she was. Though she was at least three hundred pounds, she moved like a gazelle. Light on her feet, she ran around the table as fast as anyone half her size. She set out plates and napkins. Silverware, glasses. While she busied herself filling the glasses with iced tea, Sophie’s stomach growled.
“I’m a-hurryin’, ma’am.” Dolly chuckled.
Sophie laughed with her. “I can’t remember when I had my last meal.” And she couldn’t.
“You’ll remember this one, miss, I can promise you that.” Dolly removed the lids from the silver tureens. “You want me to serve now, Miss Margaret?”
“Yes. My guests are hungry.”
Sophie assumed that meant that Margaret had heard her stomach growl. She did have a keen sense of hearing.
Dolly rushed around the conference table, filling each plate. When she finished, she wheeled Margaret to the head of the table. “Y’all can set wherever ya want, okay? We ain’t fancy in here, are we, Miss Margaret?”
“What is that?”
Dolly’s smile was as bright as the sun.
As soon as they were seated, Margaret bowed her head. Sophie, Toots, and Ida lowered their heads, waiting for the blessing. When no one spoke, Sophie piped up. “God is great. God is good, and we thank Him for our food. By His hand we shall be fed, give us, Lord, our daily bread.”
“Lunch is served,” Margaret announced.
Lunch was chunks of white-meat chicken, plump purple grapes, thinly sliced Granny Smith apples, pecans, and crushed pineapple served on freshly baked croissants. Sophie bit into the sandwich, closed her eyes, and chewed greedily. “This is the best chicken salad I’ve ever tasted. Toots, we need to get the recipe for Bernice.”
For the next half hour they forgot about entities, spirits, and demonic possession. When they finished the chicken salad, Dolly returned with dessert. Toots and Sophie eyed the blackberry cobbler with their tongues practically hanging out of their mouths. Toots would send Margaret some of Jamie’s pralines.
After they’d stuffed themselves with the cobbler, Dolly brought in a freshly brewed pot of coffee. “That’s just what I need,” Ida declared. She’d had little sleep and too much food.
Dolly and another young woman cleared away the dishes when they finished. “If it’s all right with you, Miss Margaret, I’m goin’ home now.”
“Of course, Dolly. Give your mother my love.”
Sophie looked at Toots, Mavis, and Ida. From the expressions on their faces, it was obvious they, too, wondered just exactly what kind of relationship the two women shared. They didn’t have to guess for long.
“Ted hires my staff from outside. Dolly’s been with me for twenty-six years.”
Apparently, money could buy a private staff in an upscale assisted-living facility.
Sophie looked at her watch again. A few minutes before two. She wanted to hear Margaret’s story before it was naptime.
“Dolly’s a great cook,” Sophie said.
“Yes, and a friend, but I suppose one might think it odd to have a black woman as a friend.”
Four sets of eyes stared at her.
“Why would you think that? We have friends of all different races—black, Hispanic, and Asian.”
“My father came from a long line of people who owned black men as slaves. Even after those days, my father’s attitudes were such that I was forbidden to speak to the black men who worked for him on the plantation.”
“Tell me your story, Margaret. I need to know if anything”—Sophie didn’t want to come out and use the words murder or suicide, so she went with the best she could come up with—“violent happened at Dabney House?”
Margaret’s expression went from happy to dejected in seconds. She nodded. “I will tell you what I remember, but it’s been so long, I’m afraid most of my recollections are simply fragments from bits and pieces of what I can remember. If you want to hear an old woman talk, then I have all the time in the world.”
“Wheel me over there.” She pointed to the sofa-and-chair grouping. Sophie pushed the wheelchair, surprised how easy it was to move. Poor Margaret was nothing more than a little bag of skin and bones.
“Where to start? I suppose I should start at the beginning. Or what I think is my beginning.”
“Please do,” Sophie begged. Toots, Mavis, and Ida gathered around Margaret, eagerly waiting to hear her story.
“Dabney House belonged to my father’s family. Passed from one generation to the next. In its prime, we grew some of the juiciest peaches in the South. My mother made the best peach jam in the world. She was famous for her chicken stew, too. My father ran the plantation with a strict hand. Men who’d devoted their lives to my father were fired for no reason if it suited him. I never saw this. Poor choice of words. I was not living at home any longer. When Mother gave birth to a second child, Ted Dabney’s mother, my father sent me away to live in Massachusetts, where they had one of the best schools in the world for the blind. I was five or six at the time. I didn’t mind leaving Dabney House, but I hated having to leave my mother and sister behind. You see, my father was a mean old man who only cared about himself. He usually stayed drunk, and he was a mean drunk. Mother was quiet because she knew what would happen if she wasn’t. We all feared him. He could be a tyrant one minute, but when he wanted something, he treated us with such kindness that we could almost forget that wasn’t his true nature. Mother was a cripple—did Ted tell you that?”
Sophie and Toots looked like the air had been knocked out of them. “No, he didn’t. Was she born that way?” Sophie had to know.
“No, Mother was a beautiful woman when she was young. She had the silkiest hair I’ve ever touched. She used to let me brush it when we were alone. Mother was the one who taught me how to read in Braille. To this day, I have a great passion for the written word, but that isn’t what you came all this way to hear, is it?”
Sophie didn’t answer.
“Mother had a terrible fall one night. It was the evening of her first anniversary.”
Sophie looked like she had been poleaxed. That’s the connection, she thought. Florence came to me on the evening of my and Goebel’s first anniversary. Now things are starting to make some sort of sense.
“She fell down the stairs in the main hall. From what she told me, she thought she would die. Her doctors said she would never walk again. She was a proud woman, and couldn’t imagine spending her life in a wheelchair, dependent upon my father for her every need. When her bones healed, she forced herself to walk. Every day, she would walk up and down the stairs. At the top she always looked down, and cried. One day she let me walk with her. I remember she held my hand so tight I thought it would break, but she was just trying to protect me. That day, I asked Mother why she always cried when she stood at the top of the staircase. She said it didn’t matter anymore, but I begged and pleaded with her to tell me. This part I remember very clearly, like she told me about it yesterday.
“They had a dinner party with friends, to celebrate their first anniversary. I can’t remember their names, but Mother said she was eager for them to leave. But my father drank all through dinner, and things started to get unpleasant, so Mother went upstairs to prepare for bed. She had a surprise for my father. She wanted to tell him as soon as their guests left, but he was already in a drunken rage when they left. Mother never even got a chance to tell them goodbye.
“Apparently my parents had words. They fought. Then, when my father had had enough, he pushed Mother down the staircase. Her legs and arms were broken, but she fought, and she lived. I asked her why didn’t she just die. Of course, I was a little girl at the time, and I didn’t understand death. Mother explained to me that her special surprise was me. She was pregnant with me when my father tossed her down the stairs.” A single tear fell from Margaret’s eye. “I’m sure that fall caused my blindness.”
“I am so sorry, Margaret,” Sophie said. Using the pad of her thumb, she wiped the tear from the old woman’s cheek.
The dreams, the visions, Ida’s possession made complete sense to her now. Florence’s husband, Theodore Dabney, the man whose name she called out as she was toppling down the stairs, pushed her, and she was pregnant with her daughter, who was born blind.
Her house needed a cleansing. For the first time in days, Sophie felt confident that she could remove the evil from Dabney House.
Margaret had worn herself out telling her story. Sophie, Toots, Mavis, and Ida left when they saw she’d fallen asleep in her wheelchair, but before she left, Sophie placed the silver baby bracelet in her hand.