Death by Chocolate

after
Burt Maxwell, to see if he could “squeeze him for a little juice about Martin
Streck, or anybody else,” as he had delicately put it. Savannah had offered to
go to the mall restaurant where Eleanor’s twin sister, Elizabeth, worked.
    Savannah had meant well,
inviting Cordele to come along, but now she was having second thoughts. It
wasn’t going to be easy, telling Cordele to get lost for a few minutes. She was
bound to take it personally and be insulted. Cordele took it personally if it
rained too hard in her vicinity.
    “You don’t mind, do you,”
Savannah said as they pulled into the parking lot next to the food court, “if I
go into the restaurant alone at first and see if this gal’s even working today?
If she isn’t, we’ll both go to the nail salon and get a French manicure. How
does that sound?”
    The face fell... again.
    “Come on, sugar,” Savannah
pleaded. “I really need to do this one little thing by myself, and then you and
I can shop or get a Mrs. Fields cookie or.... oh, right... you don’t eat
cookies. I’ll buy you a frozen yogurt. With sprinkles or fruit on top. Whatever
you want. How’s that? Cordele?”
    Cordele sat in the
passenger’s seat, staring out the side window, giving Savannah a fine view of
the back of her head.
    Savannah wanted to smack
her. This was ridiculous, having to bribe a woman who was nearly thirty years
old as if she were four and getting the cold-shoulder, silent treatment in
return.
    “Why did you even invite me
if you were just going to get me here and then dump me?” Cordele finally said,
still staring out the window.
    “I told you when I asked
you along that this would be a combination of business and pleasure. Let me
take care of a little bit of business and then we’ll have some fun. We’ll go to
Victoria’s Secret and sample their new perfumes and maybe go play with some
puppies in the pet store.”
    “No. I never go to pet
stores.”
    Savannah was afraid to ask why.
But she had a feeling she would find out anyway, so....
    “Why don’t you go into pet
stores, Cordele?”
    “Because it hurts too much.
It reminds me that I never had a dog of my own when I was a kid. And I wanted a
dog that—”
    “What about Gulliver? We
had that old sheep dog for ages. And Colonel Beauregard. He’s the finest hound
in the county.”
    “But they were the family’s dogs, not my own personal pet. I wanted an animal that was just mine, that I
didn’t have to share with a thousand brothers and sisters. If I’d had a dog I
would have taught him to fetch and to roll over and—”
    “Meet you in twenty minutes
at the fountain in front of Sears.”
    Savannah got out of the car
and slammed the door behind her. “I wish I’d known that not having a pet of
your own would scar you for life, Cordele,” she muttered to herself as she
walked across the lot to the mall entrance. “Hell, I would have gone out in the
woods and trapped a skunk for you. That would’ve been fun.... watching you
teach a polecat to fetch and roll over. Gr-r-r-rr.”
    She was dimly aware that
several people were watching her with looks that varied from curious to
alarmed. Obviously they thought this angry woman who was talking to herself and
growling under her breath might present a threat to society.
    “Eh, screw ‘em,” she added
at the end of her soliloquy. “If they had a sister like Cordele, they’d be
nutty, too.”
    She located the restaurant
on the mall map that was mounted just inside the entrance. Straight ahead and
to her right. It had been years since she had visited the Twin Oaks Mall, and
she was surprised at how much it had grown. They had added two new wings, where
specialty shops sold everything from gourmet coffees to stained-glass lamps,
silk flower arrangements to high-tech sports equipment and video games.
    Tucked between a bookstore
and a candle shop was the Rain Forest Café. The restaurant was a bright and
cheerful establishment with plenty of skylights, a profusion of green plants,
and tropical-themed murals on the walls that gave it the ambiance of a South
American jungle.
    Not that the sounds of
parrots and monkeys caused Savannah to think of food. And apparently, the décor
had a similar effect on the other mall visitors. Other than a family in a booth
in the back and a teenage couple at a table up front, the restaurant was empty
except for the employees.
    The bored waiters and
waitresses wore khaki safari shirts and shorts with straw hats. The