Connie Hall - Rare Breed

She spotted the drawer on his desk. She should have checked there first. Isn’t that where all the crucial stuff was always hidden?

She tried it. Locked. She grabbed the letter opener and worked the lock. James Bond made it look so easy. “Come on…” She jiggled the opener in frustration.

The lock clicked open.

“Thank you.” She peered inside and found a bundle of letters rubber banded together. The return address label read, Edna Hellstrom, Springhill Mental Health Sanitorium, Yorkshire, England. Were there some unglued genes in Hellstrom’s family? If only she had the time to read each one.

She found the rest of the drawer empty. So where would he hide illegal documents? She felt for a secret compartment on the desk. Nothing.

She closed the drawer and stood in the middle of the room and really looked at it as Hellstrom would. Something drew her gaze to the tribal masks, and a large mask near the bottom caught her attention. It was painted white, the facial features outlined in black. It was a striking, almost frightening, ngil mask. The male societies of the Fang tribe wore the gorilla mask during initiation of new members and for persecuting wrongdoers. It was a mask of dominance and retribution. If Hellstrom had a hidden narcissistic side, he would be attracted to it.

She lifted the mask, expecting to find a safe hidden behind it. What she found was a wooden sleeve secured to the back of the mask by screws. The open top-end of the sleeve revealed a blue folder, stuffed with papers.

She reached for the folder, but instinct stopped her. This was way too easy. She sniffed the leather pouch and recognized the woody scent of nuts: Physic nuts, to be exact. Africans ground the nut with palm oil to make rat poison.

Wynne grabbed several sheets of paper from the typewriter and used them as makeshift gloves to pull open the folder. It was stuffed with bills of lading for a company named LiBolo International Trucking. It had a South African address. Crates containing dry ice, some flown in from Zimbabwe, had been trucked to Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, Malawi, Namibia and almost every city in Africa. Some even went to the U.S., England, and China. The bush meat would have been packed on dry ice, then shipped.

She’d found what she was looking for.

She had never seen such a well-organized, sophisticated ring. Usually the operations were kept locally. Dealers contracted and paid hunters up front for the number and kinds of meat. The hunters hired a crew of bearers to cut out the tusks, butcher the meat, and dry it. In villages near game-managed areas, there could be fifteen commercial poachers operating at any given time. After the kills, the hunters met the dealers and trucked the meat to marketplaces in Zambian cities where it was sold illegally. Wynne had been in on many of these stings, arresting the commercial poachers with the meat. But this dealer operation was outside of Zambia, so it hadn’t been discovered.

The bills of lading only proved LiBolo International trucked something on dry ice. Even if she could convince the Zambian government to investigate this company, proving Hellstrom was tied to it would be another hurdle. It would take prosecutors and accountants months, maybe even years, to go through international courts and subpoena the company records from South Africa. And she couldn’t take the paperwork to the LZCG board. It would be too risky without definitive proof he owned the company.

She heard voices in the hall. How long had she been gone? Fifteen? Thirty minutes? She had to hurry.

The voices were getting louder. They sounded angry. Doors were slamming.

Her hands shook and the ersatz paper gloves were getting in her way. Hurry, Sperling, or you’re toast. She managed to stuff the folder back in the wooden sleeve, crumple her makeshift gloves, clean side out. She tossed them in the trash, then plopped the mask back on the wall.

The door’s lock was turning. She ran to the door just as it opened.

Wynne gazed into Hellstrom’s face. For a nanosecond they stared at each other with a wrong-restroom look.

Hellstrom recovered first and waited for an explanation.

“Sorry, I—um, was looking for the party and somehow got lost.” Lame city. He’d never buy that.

“A lost ranger? Don’t you have a keen sense of direction?”

“Only outside. Give me the outdoors and I’m fine. You can always find your way by the sun or the lay of the land. But in closed quarters, forget it. All the walls and hallways look the same to me.” Could he tell she was lying? It didn’t show in his face.

“I thought this door was locked.” His golden eyes probed her face.

“It wasn’t. I just walked right in.” Wynne wanted to step past Hellstrom, but he was holding the doorknob and blocking her way. “Now that you’re here, can you show me the way back to the party?”

His gaze fell to the red dress. For a moment her body held his attention, then his expression softened. “You look so different in that gown. Quite stunning.” He stepped inside and closed the door. “I thought the red would look good on you.”

“Thank you for letting me borrow it.” Wynne felt trapped as she watched him close the door. “We really should get back.”

“You’ve caught me.” He stepped closer, his eyes taking on a strange dynamic glow.

“Caught you?” Wynne tried to sound surprised, while her insides churned. Was this it? A showdown? If he knew she was on to him, he might move the operation. Or worse, eliminate her before she could find proof against him. Every muscle in her body tensed as she waited for his answer.

“Yes, my wretched attempt at novel writing.” He motioned toward his desk, his gaze glued to the dress. Or her body in it. She wasn’t certain.

“Novel writing?” Relief flooded Wynne as she glanced toward the desk. That’s when she noticed the mask…hanging crooked. Just a tiny bit off kilter. But definitely not how he’d left it. Oh, God! Had he seen it? From his angle, the stack of books on his desk blocked the bottom of the mask. Hopefully he wouldn’t notice.

“I really just stumbled upon your office,” she said. “So I really didn’t see much.”

“It’s fortunate the door wasn’t locked.” He cocked a brow at her and grinned, but it was a tight smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I believe in fate. There are no coincidences. I was meant to find you at this moment.”

And I was meant to find those bills of lading. “I have to disagree. I think man controls his own destiny.”

“You speak your mind, don’t you?”

“I am pretty direct.”

“You’re one of a kind.”

“Not really.”

“I must disagree. Most women of my acquaintance flatter and dissemble. But you, you know your mind and are incredibly honest. I admire that. I think I can trust you with my secret.”

“Your secret?” She wanted to look toward the mask, but held his gaze.

“My writing secret.” There was an intimate depth to his voice that she’d never heard before.

“Sure, I won’t tell anyone.”

“Thank you.” He smiled, his even white teeth gleaming. “At least not until I get it published.” He paused, his eyes dipping to her breasts. “Now that you know my secret, it’s only fitting I know one of yours.” He stepped closer, their bodies almost touching.

She could smell the starch in his white shirt, mixed with a musky aftershave and smoke from the party. A strand of straight black hair had fallen over his left brow, giving him a handsome, rakish look. If she didn’t know what a hypocrite and fraud he was, she might have been attracted to him. He was only a few inches taller than her and she was forced to look him straight in the eyes.