J. Steven York is a master at writing some of the most twisted and thoughtful stories being published. But at times he writes just wonderful and only slightly twisted real-world stories. This might be a romance, might be a mainstream story, or even a mystery. No way of knowing, but it most certainly is a Pulphouse story.

Steve has been publishing novels and powerful short fiction for over thirty years now, and before that he worked writing in the gaming industry. Steve is also doing a really fun and off-the-wall Internet comic, one of which he has allowed me to put in each issue on the back page.

* * *

“What are you doing up on that ladder, Mr. Perry?” The voice came from under my feet, and I shifted my grip, passed the screwdriver from one hand to another, and looked down into the accusative stare of Kevin, Julia’s middle son. Appropriately for a middle son, he was in his middle thirties, slim and athletic, with a surfer’s sun-bleached hair. He frowned.

“I’m just about to wire up the mounting plate for the floodlight. I turned off the breaker in your mother’s office, and she’s guarding it while I attach the wires.”

“I really don’t think you should be doing that,” he said. “You wandered in and asked if you could help, I figured you meant taping some windows or something.”

“Look, I learned some things about wiring when I was in the Navy.”

“I’m guessing that was a long time ago. And anyway, that’s not really the issue. It’s the ladder.”

I looked down at my feet and felt a few butterflies in my stomach. The light was over the front door of the outbuilding, and I was pretty high. Heights were never my thing. I could climb a ladder if I need to, but after the three or four steps I start to get nervous. Still… “Look, I’m retired, not dead.”

“Just the same, why don’t you let one of us younger guys handle it later?”

I looked at the open electrical box and the three projecting wires. The ends were safely capped off with wire nuts so that wouldn’t be a hazard if I stopped mid-job. I had my pride, but I didn’t like ladders, and I didn’t want to cause problems with Julia’s three adult sons who had showed up to help repaint and spruce up her long-neglected house and shop/office building. “If you feel strongly about it,” I said, and carefully worked my way back down the ladder to the concrete slab.

Jason, the dark-haired older son, appeared around the corner carrying a freshly cleaned extension roller, and looked at me curiously. From the other direction, youngest son Leo appeared dressed in spattered painter’s coveralls, goggles on his forehead pushing back a cresting wave of mousey brown hair that poked up above them like a hedgerow.

I’d met all of them a few times when they were still living at home. But that had been years ago. The adult versions were virtual strangers to me, other than what Julia had told me about them.

Short version: Leo was the angry young artist, still finding his way. Kevin was the free-spirit outdoorsman, surfing, rock climbing, hiking, and working just enough to finance his passions. Jason was the hands-on guy, dropping out of college to become a landscaper. None of them had turned out the way, Julia and her late husband had wanted. “Disappointed,” was not quite the word. Something more along the lines of “sad” and “concerned.”

I knew all of them struggled financially, and I had to suspect that had something to do with why they were all here now, three years after the death of their father. The peeling paint and delayed repairs on their mother’s 1940s cottage were hardly a new development.

I looked at Kevin and pointed at the electrical box with the screwdriver. “If you aren’t going to do it now, I’m going to turn the breaker back on. It’s on the same circuit with your mom’s office lights and plugs, and she’s sitting there impatiently waiting to get back to work.”

He grunted and I wandered inside the little outbuilding that housed her husband’s old workshop and, in the back, her small writing office. I placed the screwdriver on the pegboard by the door so it could be found later, and glanced around the gloomy shop area, illuminated only by sun streaming in through a small window and the door.

Most of it was empty, the power tools sold off to make ends meet. Irwin’s illness hadn’t left much behind other than medical bills and debt. It had taken Julia years to wrestle it under control and she had barely held onto the house.

I knew more about her affairs than the bored and nosy retired lawyer from down the block should, because at one point, besides being casually social with them, I had been Irwin and Julia’s attorney on several matters, and had been consulted more recently, only in a friendly capacity, when Julia wanted to write her own will and get her affairs in order. She assured me she was in fine health, but she didn’t want to leave her sons with the kind of disorganized mess she’d had to deal with. I had encouraged her, but for actual legal work, I directed her to my daughter, Gail, who had taken over my practice when I decided to retire.

Without false modesty, I can say Gail is a very bright and promising young lawyer with a strong interest in family law, a direction she’s been steering the practice since she took over.

Hell yes, I’m proud of her.

I rapped on the frame of Julia’s open office door.

“Come in,” she said. The room was small and blindingly pink with white trim, possibly personal preference, possibly the result of a modestly successful dalliance with writing romance novels that Julia had taken up until her husband’s death. She’d published several, though she had confided that her biggest advance had been only a little over ten thousand dollars. Not much of a living, and far from making a person rich.

I blinked against the pink, broken by the gray breaker box panel in the wall directly across from the door, and a brown bookshelf next to it filled with what looked for all the world like a matched set of law books. I knew that they were actually bound editions of the complete works of Erle Stanley Gardner, the creator of TV lawyer Perry Mason, who (previously unknown to me) had originated in a long-running series of novels. Julia said they were her favorites as a child. That’s how she came to make the jump from romance to mystery writing.

“Hi, M. Did you get that light hooked up?” Julia sat in an office chair in front of her darkened computer, her back swiveled to the window so she could read the manuscript pages in her hand.

“No. Kevin found me up on a ladder and shooed me away. I guess he didn’t want to have to clean up my dry shattered bones when I fell to my death. He says one of them will take care of it later.”

She laughed. “Kevin’s always been the bossy one. His younger brother has always ignored him, and his older brother—well—he was older, and that settled that.” But she seemed to drift back into her own thoughts for a moment, perhaps the result of contrasting her sons.

I flipped the breaker, and the overhead fluorescent—no, LED, I corrected myself—fixture flickered on above us. I glanced around to make sure none of the three boys were in earshot. “Let me guess. You haven’t figured out which one you’re going to ask to be executor of the will?”

She frowned and shook her head. “Look, if you can spare a few minutes, I need to run to the post office and grab a sandwich before I get back to working on the second Nancy Lawborne mystery. I’ve got a deadline, and I’m letting myself get way too distracted by this. I could use a sounding board.”

I grinned. “I have nothing but time.”

She grabbed an addressed manila envelope and we jumped into the front of her battered blue minivan. The suspension squeaked at every bump, and the radio was broken, but the seats were okay and the air conditioning worked a little, so it was fine. “I really would have liked to have gotten an electrician for the lights and stuff, but after buying all the paint and supplies and renting the sprayer, I just didn’t have the cash. Book money is coming—lots of it, but it’s not here yet, and I still have to budget.”

“The boys know this?”

“They do. Not the specifics, but none of them have ever seen much money, and I worry the idea will make them a little crazy.”

“But you can handle it?”

“Irwin handled the finances and budgeting, at his insistence, but I was always the practical one. I humored him and kept my hands off, much to my regret. I worry the boys take after him.”

“But you still need an executor.”

“I want everything to be clear and in order. All cards on the table. I have to find the best of three very suspect candidates. I love my sons, but I’m not sure I understand any of them.” She considered, then brightened. “Could Gail be the executor?”

I hesitated. “She could. You could ask her, anyway. But for an attorney to be the executor of a will they themselves drew up is getting into an ethically murky area, and my daughter tends to be conservative in such matters. The kid’s as ethically scrupulous as a saint.”

“Maybe that’s a dumb idea anyway. The executor is going to have to handle my literary estate, and that’s a very personal thing. I’d really like to keep it in the family.”

“Seems reasonable,” I said. I took a mental note to suggest that Gail brush up on intellectual property law.

“Look,” I said, “I don’t really know them at all at this point. I certainly can’t help you decide. I’m just concerned that—well—I’ve seen the pursuit of money divide a lot of families. And if that movie option you mentioned goes anywhere… The word ‘Hollywood’ just makes a lot of people go crazy.”

She smiled. “It makes me a little crazy too. I appreciate your referring me to an entertainment lawyer to handle the negotiations. I’m not equipped to swim with sharks like that.”

“Neither am I,” I said, silently adding, anymore. I’d lost interest in business law when my wife died from a heart attack six years earlier, and I’d let Gail take the reins just as quickly as I could. But I was no happier with nothing to do but hang around the house and turn into the nosy and overly talky neighbor that I had become. I was bored and adrift.

Without Mary, I had lost my anchor. I didn’t know who I was, or what I was doing.

In trying to help with Julia’s house, perhaps I was groping for that purpose. I could be a man and do something useful and productive again, or so I thought. But Kevin’s rejection had just made me feel old and useless again. And secretly, I wondered if he’d been right. I’d been assigned temporarily to assist an electrician’s mate for a few months in the Navy. I didn’t have any of the specialized training, but we were at sea and short-handed when we had to medevac a sailor with a burst appendix

Mostly I passed tools, held a flashlight, toted gear from deck to deck, and did really simple repairs under careful supervision. I knew a little about the wiring on a ship, at least the antiquated frigate I’d been serving on at the time, but that was a lot different that a modern house.

I remembered when Mary and I had redone our bathroom, and the electrician had to explain to me the legally required ground-fault detector, a special plug with a gizmo that instantly killed the power at the slightest hint of a short circuit. They had to have them in all potentially wet environments now. Maybe the ship had had them too, and I just didn’t know about it.

I sat in the car while Julia ran into the post office, and despite my protests, she bought Italian subs for both of as at a great little family place down on Central Street. We ate at an outside table and pleasantly drifted into talking music, mystery movies, and the “good old days.”

We arrived back at Julia’s house to find the three sons standing around the ladder, animatedly arguing with each other. I noticed that the floodlight fixture had been installed while we were gone, and quickly realized that was the crux of the argument.

Jason stepped out ahead of the others. “Leo blew the circuit breaker somehow!”

“I did not,” said Leo. “I just plugged the light in, and it went pop and the lights inside went out.”

Kevin shrugged. “Well, you were the one fiddling with it when it went.”

“Well,” said Jason, “it wasn’t me! I was going to install the light, but I was in the shop reading the installation instructions. By the time I came out, Leo was up there plugging the light into that mouting plate gizmo.”

I looked inside through the door to verify that Gail’s office was dark again. “You tried resetting the breaker? Did it blow again?” I considered how the simple three-wire job of connecting the fixture could have created a short circuit.

“I turned it back on,” said Kevin. “It didn’t pop. Just nothing happened.”

I considered what could be wrong. “You checked the master breaker?”

Leo looked confused.

Kevin frowned.

“Never mind,” I said, heading for the breaker box.

I verified that the breaker for the office and lighting downstairs lights was on. I jiggled the lever and it seemed solid. I turned it off and back on again. No lights. I verified that the main breaker was on. I checked the lights in the storage loft upstairs and the plugs in the shop. They all worked fine.

They were on separate breakers.

I was mystified. The problem was on that one breaker, and that one circuit.

I walked back to the electric box and found the first outlet under the window and a few feet to the right of the Perry Mason bookcase. I imagined the wiring hidden in the walls, starting with that first plug, running through the outlets in a daisy chain, one by one around the office, then up into the ceiling through all the lights in the next room, and logically ending at that outside light.

Ending.

As far as I knew, nothing had changed in that circuit but the outside light. Nothing new had been plugged in here in the office. And there were no plugs outside the office, just ceiling lights that certainly hadn’t changed. I remembered in the Navy, when the electrician’s mate I reported to had told me to know my own limitations. “Know when something is above your pay grade, and don’t hesitate to hand it off to an expert.”

I reluctantly admitted that this was one of those times.

When I came back out, the argument had drifted over towards the back door of the house, but it was still going strong. In fact things had turned even more acrimonious, and Julia had stepped into the fray. There were accusations and criticisms flying in all directions, and they had everything, and nothing, to do with a dead electrical circuit.

Julia saw me walk up and turned hopefully. “Did you find anything?”

I shook my head sadly. “I think you really need to call in an electrician on this. I’ve eliminated all the obvious things I can think of. It has to be something weird and esoteric. Maybe a defective breaker, or a wire break somewhere inside the wall.” I glanced over at the sons. “Unless one of you experts has any ideas.”

They all just looked uneasy, shuffling their feet.

“I thought so.” I focused my attention on Kevin. “You should have let me finish. I knew what I was doing. Having multiple people working separately on one project leads to mistakes and makes troubleshooting harder.”

More lessons from that long-ago electrician’s mate.

Kevin didn’t duck my stare. “You’re right. But you looked a little shaky on that ladder. I didn’t want you hurt.”

He seemed sincere.

The boys had calmed, but Julia just seemed more agitated. “It’s after five on a Friday. Even if I can get an electrician on the phone, no telling when they can come out, and it’s going to cost three times as much, if not more! I don’t have the money just laying around, and neither do any of you three clowns! All over money that I don’t even have yet, and that none of you will hopefully see for a long time!”

They just stared at her, mouths open.

“I have a deadline, a book to finish. I’ve fallen behind because of this project and all your arguing. And my office is blacked out, probably for the whole weekend, if not longer. No books, no money for anybody! All because you’re squabbling over my favor. Well let me tell you, none of you are looking good right now!

“I thought maybe I could pick one of you to act as the executor of my will, but I see now that what I really need is a keeper for the three of you!” She headed for the back door of the house. “I’m going to go put a call in to my editor and warn her I may miss my deadline.”

Everybody was looking as crushed as I’d felt a few a few minutes earlier. I found some previously missing empathy with them. “I’m sorry. I had hoped maybe I could puzzle this out and defuse the situation.”

Leo gave me a look of contempt. “Fat lot of good you did!”

“He’s right,” said Jason, looming closer. “We’ve seen you hanging around her. How do we know you aren’t the one after her money?”

“I’m a retired attorney,” I said. “I’m not rich, but I’ve got my own money, thanks. And I remind you that she doesn’t yet have any money. She’s spent most of what she’s gotten catching up bills and paying for these house repairs.

“I’m trying to help because I’ve known your family for a long time, and I’ve see what hard times you’ve all gone through. I’d happily lend your mom whatever she needs to get through, but I know she’s too proud to even consider the offer. So I thought I could at least lend a little elbow grease.

“I’m sorry you three don’t see it that way. Well, you’re on your own now. I’m going home. If your mom wants me, she can call.”

I was halfway down the block, counting the cracks in the sidewalk, feeling angry and dissatisfied on every level, when I heard the steps of someone running up behind me. I glanced back and saw Kevin, already braking to drop in beside me and match my rapid walk.

“Listen Mr. Perry. I owe you an apology. I wasn’t entirely truthful back there.”

I slowed my pace to a stroll. “I’m listening.”

“First of all, it was true, I was worried about you on the ladder. But I also wanted to get the light fixed and get mom’s office power back on to make myself look good. I was trying to be the hero.” He hung his head. “I know this is all stupid, the way my brothers and I are fighting. But that’s just how we are.”

I nodded. “I have a brother too.”

“It’s not about the money, or being executor really, not for me anyway. It’s just something to jockey over, a way of keeping score.”

“You’re adults. Maybe it’s time to start acting like it.”

He nodded. “You’re right. Absolutely. I’m always the guy trying to take charge. Nobody listens to me. Leo just doesn’t, and Jason just won’t. But this time I’m starting to see I don’t deserve to be in charge. I don’t know anything about estates, or books, or any of this stuff. I couldn’t even follow a simple set of—I don’t know how, but…”

I continued his sentence. “But you’re the one that wired that mounting plate into the electrical box.”

“How did you know?”

I smiled. “Elimination. Leo knew so little about what he was doing he’d never have figured out the mounting plate and got the wires hooked up. Jason was still reading the instructions when the problems started. You were the first to know the problem, and so had a head start. You were rushing to get the office power back on.”

He nodded. “I glanced at the instructions. It looked simple enough and so I threw them back in the box, grabbed a screwdriver, and went right to it.”

“But then you got called away somehow.”

“I finished putting in the plate, and ran into the house for a quick pee break. Mom stopped me on the way back to chew me out about chasing you off the ladder. And when I finally got back, Leo was up already up there finishing the job. I was about to yell at him when the lights went out.”

“And you knew it was your fault.”

“Because the light itself just has a little three pin plug on the bottom that plugs into that terminal block on the base where the wires hook up. It’s idiot proof. Even Leo couldn’t screw it up.”

I looked him in the eye. He didn’t flinch.”But you were willing to let him take the fall for it.”

“It was childish, but I figured he had it coming for trying to take the credit. But I was wrong. I should have owned up.”

“Yes,” I said, stopping in the sidewalk and turning back. “You should have. But you owned up to it eventually, and you recognized where you went wrong.”

I blinked. “And I think I just recognized where I went wrong too!” I started walking back towards Julia’s house. I turned back and waved Kevin to follow me. “Come on. I could use somebody to pass the tools and hold the ladder. Let’s see if we can fix this thing.

“Tell me Kevin, how do you interrupt a circuit from the end of the line?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“From the beginning,” I said.

Our first step was to eliminate the short circuit I knew had to be there. The short circuit that wasn’t the problem, just the trigger.

I climbed up the ladder (Kevin braced it from the bottom) and removed the two screws that held the light onto the bracket, exposing the terminal block that Kevin has mentioned, and that I knew about from my own reading of the instructions.

The mistake was immediately clear. The plastic terminal block was supposed to hold the three wires in holes in the side, which were clamped down with screws. The light itself had a three pin plug that connected to the three holes in the top of the block. Only Kevin had misunderstood and inserted the wires into the top of the terminal block, keeping the pins from plugging in properly. With no place to go, the pins had bent, hitting the screws and bridging the ground wire with one of the other two, and creating a short circuit.

I carefully removed the wires and capped them off with wire nuts.

Then we went to Julia’s empty office. I looked at the bookcase. The set of books didn’t completely fill the shelf. There were a few gaps filled with various knickknacks. “Gardner, you sly old fox, you still have a few mysteries to keep.”

Julia appeared in the door behind us. She looked considerably calmer than the last time I’d seen her.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “I had a talk with my editor. I could tell she wasn’t thrilled, but she said I could have those extra days if I need them. A week even if I really need it.”

“That’s great,” I said, “but maybe you won’t need them.” I bent down to the second shelf from the bottom, removed a decorative glass pot, and peered into the dim space behind. I could just make out a previously hidden plug, and on it a little glowing LED light. I reached for it, found the reset button, and pushed.

The ceiling lights instantly flickered on.

Julia gasped. “How?”

I pointed to the plug behind the shelf. “This plug, hidden and presumably forgotten behind the shelf, is a ground-fault plug. It’s designed to detect even the smallest short on the circuit and shut it down before someone can be electrocuted or a fire can start. They’re used on any circuit in a potentially wet location. An outside light fixture would count, I imagine, maybe a workshop as well. I’d have to read the zoning statutes. And once the ground fault plug is tripped, it interrupts the circuit until manually reset with this little button.”

“We don’t need an electrician?”

“I’ll still need to hook up the floodlight, but I know how to do it.” I looked at Kevin, who was grinning at the revised state of the world. “Or Kevin could do it, once we take a good look at the instructions and clear a few things up.”

“I’ll go find the box the light came in,” said Kevin slipping past us and out the door.

“Take your time. I want to talk to your mom for a few minutes.” I closed the office door behind him.

She smiled, shaking her head. “Thank you!”

I shrugged. “I was giving up and heading home when Kevin caught up with me. He helped me to put it together. Turns out I do at least know a few things about wiring!”

“And solving mysteries.”

“Maybe.”

I hesitated, wondering where exactly I should stick my noisy neighbor nose. But maybe in this case, I was acting more as friend of the family. “Look, you seemed pretty fed up with your sons and the whole executor thing.”

“I was angry—and afraid. I’ve never missed a deadline before, and this book contract is important to me, in more ways than one.”

“I can’t tell you what to do, but when you’re calm enough to think about it, you might take another look at Kevin.”

She looked skeptical. “I’m just saying I see some potential in him. A mystery is about who-done-it. But in adulthood, it’s sometimes more important who didn’t do it.”

She shook her head, confused.

“Never mind. Just give him a thought. Make up your own mind.”

“Sure.” But then her mind seemed to go somewhere else, and she slowly smiled.

“This all give me some ideas for book three! But I’ll have to change things around a bit.”

“I suppose there will have to be a murder.”

“Is it a mystery if there isn’t a murder?”

“You’re the expert.”

“Speaking of book three, when I turn this thing in, I want to get an immediate start. I’ve got some legal questions a retired attorney might be able to help me with.”

“Sure,” I said. And then the words tumbled out, unexpected. “Let me buy you dinner.”

Both of us looked surprised. But I rolled the idea around in my mind. I missed Mary every day, but she was gone, and this seemed less like a betrayal than an inevitable evolution.

I was moving again.

Where I didn’t know.

I wondered if Gail could use an investigator…