mother's business will still survive if you occasionally take a night off from being the neighborhood jack-of-all- trades and guardian angel.'
'That's not why I offered,' Michael said.
'Well, I'll be damned,' said the unseen voice. 'What the dickens ...'
'Meg, I realize this is going to come as a surprise to you,' Michael continued. 'But--'
He was interrupted by a loud explosion from outside the pantry door. It was followed almost immediately by a sharp thud, a second explosion from somewhere outside the house, and the sound of the assistant shrieking, 'Oh my God! Oh no! Oh my God! Oh no!' over and over.
Michael and I ran out to find Mr. Price slumped against the wall opposite the fuse box while the assistant tried to put out the flames that were dancing over his boss's clothing. Michael grabbed the doormat and began beating out the flames, while I ran to the stove to grab the fire extinguisher. Dad picked that moment to reappear.
'Meg, were you fooling with the fuse box?' he asked.
'No, Mr. Price was,' I said. 'See if he's all right.'
Michael and I extinguished the flames. Dad found that far from being all right, Mr. Price had stopped breathing. I called 911 and yelled for someone to bring Dad's medical bag while Michael took the increasingly hysterical assistant outside to calm him down and Dad administered CPR. Dad managed to get Mr. Price breathing again, and then the ambulance drove up. Dad took Michael aside for a few quiet words before jumping into the ambulance and riding off to the hospital with Mr. Price.
I found myself wondering why in a crisis Dad always turned not to me but to the nearest male, even if it happened to be Michael, who was, after all, practically a stranger.
'I don't see why your father had to go to the hospital with him,' Mother complained, as we watched the ambulance driving off. Apparently I wasn't the only one in a cranky mood. 'Perhaps we should go over to Pam's for dinner.'
'Might as well; you're not going to get any hot dinner around here tonight,' chimed in Mrs. Fenniman cheerfully. 'When your fuse box fried Price, it knocked out the whole neighborhood!'
Just then Eric came running up. 'Grandma! Grandma!' he cried. 'The doggie bit me.'
'You mustn't tease the doggie, dear,' Mother said. 'Let's go see if your mommy can fix us some dinner.'
'I'm so sorry,' Michael began. 'Spike's fault, not yours,' I said.
'But I'd still better take him home,' Michael said. 'Meg, I need to ask you something.'
I strolled back to the house with him. 'Your dad wanted one of us to keep everyone away from the fuse box,' Michael said. 'He wants to get someone in to make sure it wasn't ... tampered with. He's going to call the sheriff from the hospital. Could you keep your eye on it while I take Spike home? Then I'll come back and spell you.'
I stood on the front porch for a few minutes, watching Michael and Spike disappear in one direction and Eric and Mother and Mrs. Fenniman in the other. Then I walked down to the edge of the bluff where I could enjoy the breeze from the river while keeping my eye on the fuse box through the open back door. It was a beautiful night, and with the power out there were no radios, TV'S, or air conditioners to drown out the slapping of waves against the beach, the songs of the cicadas, and the first warbling notes of Mrs. Fenniman's rendition of the 'Ride of the Valkyries.'
Thursday, June 16
We discovered the following morning that the power was out not only on our street but throughout the neighborhood. It wasn't until midafternoon that they finished repairing the relay station or whatever it was that short-circuited. Mr. Price survived, thanks to Dad's quick intervention, but his recovery was expected to be slow. When the temperature had reached ninety degrees well before noon, ill-feeling began to spread through a neighborhood contemplating a summer without a capable air-conditioning repairman at hand. I was sure the local weatherman was gloating when he reported the National Weather Service's prediction that temperatures for the coming month would be above average. If anyone blamed us, they could take consolation in the fact that we were suffering more than most. Dad and the sheriff insisted on taking the fuse box away to be examined by an expert to see if it had been tampered with. It was going to be a few days before we could have another fuse box installed and get our power back. Mother went to stay with Pam, who had plenty of room with Mal and most of the kids away. I stayed on at the house. With the answering machine out of commission, I didn't feel I could leave the phone for too long. I might miss a vital call from a caterer, a florist, or someone who had peacocks.
Friday, June 17
'It's amazing how interested everyone in town is in the fuse box incident,' Michael said, as we ate Chinese carryout on the porch Friday evening. When he found out I was holding down the fort at the house, he'd gotten into the thoughtful habit of showing up several times a day with care packages of food, cold beverages, and ice.
'Nearly everyone who comes into the shop wants to hear all about it,' he went on. 'And a lot of people are coming in on remarkably flimsy pretexts.'
'That's small-town life for you.'
'Seems to have driven Mrs. Grover's death quite out of everyone's head. I haven't mentioned your dad's suspicion that the fuse box might have been tampered with, of course.'
'Of course,' I said. 'Too bad the distraction is likely to be temporary. People were starting to get hysterical about the idea that a murderer could be running around loose, so if it weren't for Mr. Price's close call, I'd have called the fuse box incident a lucky thing.'
'It was certainly a lucky thing for Mr. Price your dad showed up when he did.'
'And lucky for Dad that he didn't show up earlier,' I added. 'If he had, he'd have been the one who was electrocuted, and there wouldn't have been a doctor around to revive him.'
'Where was he all day, anyway?'
'In Richmond, at the medical examiner's office. He announced at dinner the night before that he was going next week to try to get some more definite action on Mrs. Grover's case. And then, as usual, he changed his mind on impulse and decided to take off the next morning.'
'Had he talked to the medical examiner's office before?'
'On the phone. But he seemed to think he wasn't going to get anywhere unless he went down and kicked up a fuss in person. He also seems to think he has some evidence the ME hasn't really seen.'
'The sandbag graphs, perhaps,' Michael said. 'And the results of the milk jug flotilla. I can't wait to see if the fuse box really was sabotaged.'
'Perhaps it's my overactive imagination. But it has occurred to me to wonder if it's really an accident that this happened the day after he went around announcing to the immediate world that he was going to see the ME about Mrs. Grover's death.'
'If I were your dad, I'd watch my back,' Michael said. 'As a matter of fact, I intend to watch my own back. I tried to talk your mother into letting me mess with the fuse box, remember?'
Saturday, June 18
Things were quiet. Too quiet, as they say in the movies. The local grapevine still didn't see the connection between Mrs. Grover's death and the fuse box incident, and none of us who did felt like setting off panic by mentioning the possibility. I wished I didn't see a connection. I felt as if I were waiting for the other shoe to drop, but had no idea whether the shoe would be another murder or another explosion or merely another catastrophic change in one of the brides' plans. I tried to avoid looking over my shoulder every thirty seconds as I sat in the
