The Peacock Feather Paradox

The rain was a steady percussion on the glass, a grey sheet outside the Heron’s Nest office, blurring the already indistinct shapes of the old industrial park. Inside, the only light came from the desk lamp, casting a jaundiced glow on the ledger. It was late. Past when Frankie usually scurried out, past when Maxine’s polished heels clicked down the hall. Just me, the numbers, and the persistent drip from a leaky pipe in the corner.

My finger traced the line item again: ‘Installation — Peacock Feather Paradox, Advance Payment — £125,000.’ Jennie’s most ambitious piece yet. Supposed to be a sprawling, kinetic sculpture of recycled steel and iridescent glass, a commission from the city’s new arts wing. The collective, a non-profit, had leveraged everything to secure it. Trouble was, the accompanying bank transfer record was… hollow. Like a bad tooth.

I flicked back through the physical cheque stubs. Nothing. Online transfers? A fragmented trail, ending in a blind alley. Not a single verified outgoing payment for that amount to Jennie’s usual art supply vendors or to her personal account. The advance was gone. Vanished. Or rather, it had never *left* the collective’s account in the first place, according to the paper trail, yet the books showed it as disbursed.

A cold knot tightened in my gut. This wasn't a clerical error. This was a gap large enough to swallow our entire operating budget, and then some. I leaned back in the creaking chair, the springs groaning in protest. My gaze drifted to the framed photograph on the wall – a black-and-white print of the collective’s founders, Maxine among them, young and bright-eyed. Before the weight of keeping a non-profit afloat in a small town wore down idealism to a fine, grey grit. Before things like this. Embezzlement. The word tasted sour, metallic.

A Shadow’s Whisper

The next morning, the office was its usual hum of barely contained chaos. Frankie, all nervous energy and darting eyes, was already at her desk, tapping away at a keyboard that sounded like a cheap marimba. She’d stacked the mail in an impossibly neat tower. My arrival, punctual as always, seemed to make her flinch, her shoulders tensing slightly.

“Morning, Frankie,” I mumbled, heading straight for the percolator. The coffee was weak, as always. A small blessing, given my nerves.

“Oh, Ethan. Good morning,” she said, her voice a little too high, a little too quick. She didn’t meet my gaze, instead focusing intently on a spreadsheet of membership renewals. Frankie had been with the collective longer than anyone, starting as a volunteer, working her way to administrative assistant. Always seemed… fragile. Like a gust of wind might scatter her. Or a question she didn’t want to answer.

I took my mug and leaned against her desk, trying for casual. “Saw the projections for Jennie’s piece. The ‘Peacock Feather Paradox’. Big numbers.”

Frankie’s fingers froze on the keyboard. Her eyes flickered up, wide and uncertain. “Oh. Yes. It’s… quite the undertaking, isn’t it?”

“It is. You process the vendor invoices for that one?” I watched her, sipping the lukewarm coffee, trying to appear nonchalant. But my heart was thudding a slow, heavy rhythm against my ribs.

“Some of them. Maxine usually handles the big ones, the capital expenditures. You know, anything over twenty grand.” She gestured vaguely towards Maxine’s closed office door, a faint tremor in her hand.

It was a decent deflection. Maxine did oversee the major finances, but the initial advance, a lump sum to get the ball rolling, would typically pass through Frankie’s ledger entries for basic record-keeping. The lack of a clear paper trail, the digital ghost, suggested a deliberate bypassing of procedure.

“Right. Just tidying up some loose ends on the books,” I said, letting it drop for now. Pushing harder would only make her retreat further into herself. Frankie was a squirrel, and I hadn’t yet figured out where she buried her nuts.

Later, I cornered Maxine in the small kitchen, where she was meticulously arranging teabags by colour. Maxine was a woman who approached life as if it were a high-stakes chess game, always three moves ahead, every hair on her head perfectly in place. Even in the gloom of a perpetual October, she radiated a polished, impermeable competence.

“Maxine,” I began, trying to keep my tone even. “A moment about the ‘Peacock Feather Paradox’ advance.”

She turned, a small, polite smile on her lips, but her eyes, sharp and intelligent, were already assessing me. “Ah, yes. Jennie’s truly outdone herself this time. Such vision. Such… expense.” She picked up a box of Earl Grey, as if considering its philosophical implications.

“Indeed. I’m just trying to reconcile the initial payment. I can’t seem to find the full outgoing transfer. The one for a hundred and twenty-five thousand.”

Maxine’s smile didn’t waver, but a flicker—a near imperceptible tightening around her mouth—betrayed her. “That. Yes, that was… handled. A private arrangement, you see. To streamline the process. Jennie prefers a certain level of… discretion for her more complex financial needs.” She placed the Earl Grey back, then picked up a Peppermint. “Confidentiality clauses, you understand.”

“Confidentiality clauses don’t usually make an entire transaction disappear from our verifiable records, Maxine,” I countered, my voice hardening a fraction. “Especially not for an advance of that magnitude from a non-profit. The board won’t appreciate a 'private arrangement' when audit time rolls around.”

She sighed, a gentle expulsion of air that still managed to convey annoyance. “Ethan, you worry too much. It’s all perfectly above board. The funds are earmarked. Jennie has them. Or will have them. It's a complex staging, lots of subcontractors, unique materials. The money is being disbursed as needed through… an alternative channel. Nothing for you to concern yourself with.” She met my gaze then, her eyes like chips of river stone, cold and unyielding. “Focus on the grant applications. That’s your forte.”

The conversation was a brick wall, smooth and unyielding. Maxine was either completely innocent, playing me for a fool, or a master of misdirection. I didn't like either option.

The Moth in the Margin

I spent the afternoon hunched over the older ledgers, the ones before we switched to digital. The paper smelled of dust and forgotten things. My head throbbed. What if Maxine was right? What if I was just missing some arcane accounting trick? But my gut kept telling me otherwise. This wasn't an oversight. This felt deliberate, orchestrated.

Flipping through a particularly thick volume from two years prior, a ledger mostly filled with mundane utilities and petty cash, something caught my eye. Tucked deep into the spine, between two pages detailing a stationery order and a minor repair, was a folded slip of paper. Not official Heron’s Nest stock. Just a plain, cream-coloured scrap, the kind used for personal notes.

I pulled it out carefully. The handwriting was small, precise, almost delicate. Jennie’s hand. I’d seen it on various artist statements. But the content… it wasn’t an expense. It was a sequence of numbers, separated by dashes, and then a single word: ‘Peacock.’

The numbers didn’t look like dates, or amounts, or even a phone number. They were too long. Too… random. And the word. *Peacock*. A shiver traced its way down my spine. Had Jennie hidden this here? Why? And why this specific ledger, from two years ago, long before the ‘Peacock Feather Paradox’ was even conceived?

My mind raced, connecting the dots that weren’t there, the non-existent lines of a phantom diagram. The missing funds, Maxine’s evasiveness, Frankie’s jumpiness, and now this cryptic message, hidden like a moth in the margin. It felt like I was piecing together a mosaic made of fog.

That evening, instead of going home, I drove past Jennie’s studio. It was an old boathouse converted into a workshop, its windows usually blazing with light at all hours. Tonight, it was dark. Completely dark. Strange for her, especially with such a massive project underway. She was obsessive, often working through the night.

I parked my beat-up sedan a little way down the lane, the engine ticking as it cooled. The rain had softened to a persistent drizzle, turning the autumn leaves on the road into a slick, glistening carpet. A single light flickered on in the studio, then off again. Just for a second. Enough to show a figure silhouetted against the pane, tall and slender, then gone. Not Jennie. Too slight. Frankie? What would Frankie be doing there, alone, in the dark?

My breath hitched. This was getting messy. Too many moving parts. Too many shadows. The non-profit, the art collective, a bastion of small-town integrity, was rotten at its core. And I, Ethan, the treasurer who just wanted to balance the books, was elbow-deep in the rot. The thought, cold and unsettling, lodged itself in my skull: someone knew I was looking. Someone knew I was getting too close to their gilded feathers.

A sudden, sharp tap on my passenger side window made me jump, my heart leaping into my throat. I spun, startled, my hand instinctively fumbling for the door lock.

Through the rain-streaked glass, a face loomed, pale and indistinct in the gloom, eyes glinting. It wasn’t Frankie. It wasn’t Maxine. And it certainly wasn’t Jennie. The face pressed closer, a whisper of a smile playing on lips I couldn't quite see. And then, a low, guttural voice, barely audible over the rain, spoke two words that chilled me to the bone: “Too curious.”