“Oh, that reminds me.” I adjust my position to get closer to her intentionally. “You looked like you were crying when I got there.” She grimaces, so I add, “Please tell me why you were upset.”
“I did tell you,” she lies.
Frowning, I sharpen my gaze. “No, you didn’t.”
Her eyes flick to the golf green, but mine stay locked on her profile. There’s a bob in her throat as she decides whether to answer me with honesty or with more of her utter nonsense. As much as I want the truth, I’m also curious to see what gibberish will come out of her mouth.
“Well, um.” She nibbles her lower lip, then finally meets my stare. “I said the birds were missing. That was true.”
“So that wasn’t one of your distraction things?”
“It wasn’t,” she admits.
“What birds?”
“Neighborhood peafowl. They’re sort of a free-range family that lives in our complex. I feed them every day. And the last few days, there’s been no sign of them.”
“Peafowl?” I crick my head to one side as I realize what she’s saying. “Like peacocks?”
“Yes. Peacocks are the males, and peahens are the female. Together, they’re peafowl.”
My grin grows the more she talks. I can’t hold it back.
Lila and her birds. I should’ve known. I suppose her daily bird feeding explains the giant bag of seeds she was carrying the other night.
“Mine are Indian Peafowls. The males have the blue plumage with an iridescent green tint. They’re the ones people picture when they think of a peacock.” She grimaces. “Well, technically, they aren’tmine. Although I wish they were.”
“Thanks, Professor Kent. Looks like I learned something ornithological today.” My grin fades when I remember why I was asking. “And you were crying because they’re missing?”
She shifts away from me, spine stiffening and pressing into the seat back. Then her arms cross at her chest defensively. “Never mind.”
Shit.
“Lila, I’m not mocking you. I’m only asking to make sure I understand what happened to upset you.”
So I can fix it, even if she never knows that.
“You mean it? You aren’t about to make fun of me for crying about birds?”
I shake my head and hold up one hand, palm out. “I swear. I wouldn’t do that.”
She lets her arms slide onto her lap. “Yeah, so I had just finished exercising and was filling up my water. From the kitchen window, I saw thelesser adjutantnext door using a broom to back two peahens into a cage in his backyard.”
I stick out my hand to pause her story. “Thewhatnext door?”
“Oh.” She cups her mouth with both hands as if she’s trying to shove the words back where they came from.
I wait patiently, my eyes wide with curiosity. And I’ll wait all damn night to hear this explanation if needed. I can already tell it’s gonna be a doozy.
She lets her shoulders droop. In a near whisper, she says, “That’s what I call my neighbor. I usually don’t say it out loud.” She motions to the top of her head and stammers through an explanation. “He’s bald and ugly like a lesser adjutant. That’s a kind of stork from Thailand. They’re hideous. And my neighbor is hideous, inside and out. The name just fits. I know I shouldn’t call him that. But he’s not a good guy.”
The more she talks, the more I have to quash my laughter. But her sincere concern over what she said about her neighbor has my mind reeling.
If you’d asked me a few weeks ago, I’d have sworn that her sunshiny girl next door veneer was nothing but a mask to hide her true character. Then she goes and does something like this, where she genuinely feels bad for calling her dick bag neighbor an ugly bird name. It leaves me wondering whether she is truly as good as I initially thought she was. Is it possible she’s not a snake in pretty grass?
Or could she be both? Are they mutually exclusive?
More to the point, if she’s really this worried about insulting her neighbor via the lesser bald bird, whatever she called it, could she be involved in something criminal? That doesn’t seem possible.
