Let's Play Dead

CHAPTER 11

Friday passed without any additional crises, thank goodness, and I was happy to watch Eric as he settled into his new position quietly and efficiently. I left for the weekend feeling pleased with myself.

I am a self-proclaimed workaholic, which is most likely the reason I have no life outside of work. I have had the occasional romantic relationship that occupied an afternoon or evening now and then, but the last one had left a bad taste in my mouth, and I was determined to take things slow with James. Every now and then I noticed that I seemed to have no friends beyond those at the Society, and I had few people just to get together with. But I spent so much time dealing with other people at work, it was nice to have no one but myself to answer to on weekends.

Of course, since I owned my own home, there was always plenty there to keep me busy on any given weekend. There was always something that needed fixing or sprucing. And of course there was cleaning. I deferred the basic stuff as long as I could, until the dust bunnies started reproducing in the corners and chasing me around, and then I tended to do it all at once, so I could try to forget about it for another few weeks. Or months. The forgetting part was easier to do during the winter months, when it was near dark when I left in the morning and definitely dark when I arrived home at night.

I sighed and tracked down my trusty vintage vacuum. At least housecleaning left my mind free to roam, as long as I didn’t have to wrestle with such weighty problems as which cleaning agent would best remove the sticky stain I couldn’t remember making. That involved close reading of the fine print on package labels, which these days were far too small and loaded with dire warnings. But the basic stuff, like dusting and vacuuming, used only a percent or two of my consciousness, and I applied the rest to the riddle of the hazardous Willy the Weasel. Thus went my inner dialogue on Saturday:

Why would anybody wire an animated weasel at a children’s museum to hurt someone?

I don’t know.

Who was the intended victim?

I don’t know.

Who had both access to the building and the skills to do it?

I don’t know.

What was I going to do about it?

I don’t know.

Why was I involved in this at all?

I really don’t know.

But I was already in the thick of the matter, unfortunately-through no fault of my own!-and I knew myself well enough to know that I couldn’t just walk away now. Besides, from all I knew and had heard from others, Arabella didn’t deserve this kind of trouble. Based on personal experience, I knew all too well the spot she was in, and I also knew that when it had happened to me, I wouldn’t have been able to sort things out without some significant help, sometimes from unexpected sources. I wanted to help Arabella as sort of cosmic payback. Or pay it forward. Whatever. I chased down another clump of something fuzzy under my couch with the skinny end of the vacuum hose.

But I had pitifully little to go on, and the delightful homicide detective Meredith Hrivnak was not likely to share much with me. She was probably still peeved that I’d done more than she had to wrap up the recent incident at the Society. James wasn’t going to be able to help, either. He wasn’t even involved in the case. And I had so, so much else I should be doing for the Society. When did I have time to look into this?

Thinking of things I didn’t have time for, I also amused myself by dissecting my date with James. Had there been any chemistry between us? I’d have to say yes. But James and I were both grown-ups with busy lives, so where that chemistry might take us was anybody’s guess. When would we find the time to explore the possibilities? Most of my free time had evaporated when I took the job of president, and I didn’t see it coming back for a while. And now with Arabella’s problems…

I went round and round with the whole mess in my head as I scrubbed and polished, and by the end of the afternoon I had a very clean house and no resolution. I took myself to the nearest market and bought fresh supplies for a sumptuous dinner for one, which I prepared, enjoyed, and cleaned up after, feeling very virtuous. Then I watched a movie on television, got bored in the middle, and went to bed.

Sunday morning I knew I couldn’t spend another day of the same. The choices were (a) go into work, or (b) find something more distracting to do. I really couldn’t face going into work-I had to maintain some perspective and allow myself a few breaks from it, or the job would overwhelm me. What would be a good distraction?

In the end, after an indulgent breakfast, I decided to take a drive. It almost didn’t matter where, but I found myself drifting toward Chester County and the Brandywine River: Andrew Wyeth country. I bypassed the lovely museum in Chadd’s Ford but turned north and followed the Brandywine River, along the narrow, twisting road that headed toward West Chester. Luckily there were few other people on the road today, a chilly Sunday in January. As I passed it, I saluted the Wyeth farm, familiar from so many paintings.

I had almost forgotten about the Book Barn that lay on this road, since I rarely went roaming the back roads around there, but on a whim I pulled into the near-empty graveled lot in front. Happily it was open, and I tugged open the creaky wooden door to be greeted by a scent of wood smoke and the gaze of a sleepy cat in a battered chair close to a cast-iron stove. I raised a hand to the woman behind the desk and commenced wandering through the many disjointed floors of used books, leafing through old volumes as the spirit moved me. I loved books, both old and new, but the space limitations of my tiny house imposed their own restrictions, so I had to ration myself strictly when it came to buying still more books. But there were always treasures to be found, too irresistible to pass up. I took a quick peek at the children’s book section to see if there were any examples of Harriet the Hedgehog but came up dry. I drifted through the cookbook section-I probably spent far more time reading cookbooks than cooking from them, but it was a simple pleasure. I poked among the mysteries, but nothing caught my fancy. Then I turned to the home improvement area, and a little lightbulb went on: maybe I could find something simple that would explain to me just how wiring and electricity worked, so I’d have better insight into the accident at Let’s Play.

Hmm… no Wiring for Dummies. The Simplified Wiring looked like it required an engineering degree. Now, I’m not stupid, and I’ve been dealing the structural problems with my own house for a decade, but even I know my limitations, and I’d left the wiring issues to professionals. All I really wanted was a basic explanation of how an electrical system worked-and what things to watch out for if you didn’t want to electrocute someone. Which might lead to what things you should do if you did want to electrocute someone. But that would be a different book.

In the end I walked out with several books, as usual. I paid, stroked the still-sleeping cat, and climbed back into my car to head back to Route 30, the slow road home to Bryn Mawr. I arrived home before dark despite a quick stop at the decadent French bakery in Wayne, and reheated a plate of yesterday’s ample leftovers, then found an old afghan and curled up with my new old copy of Step-by-Step Home Wiring.

Two hours later I was still confused, despite the clear language and cute line drawings in the book. Clearly there was a reason I had majored in English rather than something practical: I had no aptitude for anything mechanical. Putting it in the simplest possible terms, electricity flowed into, say, my house, and then it flowed out again. Along the way it passed through my appliances and lamps and whatnot, if the switch was opened to allow that. Or did I mean closed? If the switch wasn’t open, the current ignored that detour and kept right on going. That much I understood.

I lay back and reviewed what I had seen of the exhibit at Let’s Play. Admittedly my memories were a bit jumbled; Jason getting zapped had driven a lot of other details right out of my mind. But I grasped the basic principles: each of the animals was, well, animated. You-or an eager child-touched them or moved a piece, and they responded with lights or movements or sound, each requiring that an electrical connection be activated by the motion. Presumably this was a simple process, and the installation also had to be both safe and sturdy-I had no doubt that an excited child would want to repeat the process over and over, and might well whack the animal if it didn’t respond fast enough. This much was obvious even to me. So what had gone wrong?

As I understood it, the only way the electricity could pass through an innocent bystander was if he or she actually completed the circuit, diverting the current from where it was supposed to go to a different path-that is, through the person instead of the wiring. But unlike metal objects, people were not good conductors of electricity. The current really, really had to want to follow the metal, and even then in most cases the current would not be strong enough to do more than give someone a nasty shock. Of course, that alone could be enough to do serious harm to a small child or an elderly grandparent, both of whom were primary customers of Let’s Play.

But the conclusion I had to draw, even in my state of near ignorance, was that a simple mistake would not be enough to cause major harm. Ergo, someone with malicious intent had to have altered the exhibit, for unknown purposes. At least one circuit breaker had blown out the first time, when Jason was shocked. Had it the second time? I had no answers.

So I decided to eat dessert. Buttercream is very soothing.