Murphy. We’re-we were-in the same union local.”
“I met him before…” I left that thought unfinished. “He was working on the wiring at Let’s Play, right?”
“Yeah, but that was pretty much finished. He liked to help out-I guess Ms. Heffernan sweet-talked him into doing some extra last-minute stuff. We worked together on a couple of jobs. He was a real union guy-I’m a paid-up member, but I don’t get involved in stuff with the local. Joe liked all the political stuff with the union. And he was a good bit younger than me. But he was a buddy-if he knew of a job that needed some extra hands, I could count on him to put in a word for me. I keep working pretty steady that way.”
That made it a bit harder for me to ask my next question. “Look, Barney, I don’t want to get you or anybody else into trouble, and if you’re uncomfortable talking about this, I’ll understand. Do you think Joe might have messed up with the wiring?”
“I don’t think so. And there were other guys working on it, and the city inspectors checked it all out. Far as I know, it passed, no problem. No reason why anyone should have gotten hurt.”
“Would somebody have wanted to hurt Joe?”
Barney shrugged. “I didn’t know a whole lot about his personal life. He did okay with jobs. Better’n me. And he wasn’t married, didn’t have any kids to support. The union chipped in to help pay for his funeral, you know. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
I didn’t think Barney was going to say anything more about Joe. “That means that somebody else had to have rigged the wiring. Right?”
Barney nodded. He still looked uncomfortable-was he reluctant to point a finger at any of his colleagues?
I pressed on. “What I’d like to know is, how easy would it be to rig up something to shock someone on purpose? How much would they have to know?”
“I need another drink,” Barney said. He waved at the waitress and pointed to his glass, then turned back to me. “You think somebody screwed it up deliberately?”
I nodded. “Twice. Arabella swears she had it checked out by two different people after the first incident.” When Barney stared at me blankly, I added, “There was an earlier incident where someone was shocked, but he’s all right.”
“Damn. You talked to the cops about this? I mean, both of these problems?”
“Well, yes, I told them what I saw the first time it happened-they contacted me after the second incident. Look, Barney, I’m just asking for information, for my own sake. If there’s a way it could have been an accident-some rookie mistake or something came loose-then that will be the end of it. But if somebody set this up… Hey, it’s going to give whichever electrician did the work a black eye, won’t it? You have friends there?” I didn’t want or expect him to betray any of his buddies.
“Yeah,” Barney said reluctantly.
“So just tell me how this could have been set up without anybody noticing.”
“You seen this exhibit thing?”
“I have. A bunch of different animals with interactive features, scattered around so the little kids can walk through them. The kids poke or pull something on one of the animals, and something else moves or flashes or makes noise. The outer shells are some kind of plastic, I think-and there aren’t a lot of places where kids could stick a finger. So whoever tampered with one of them would have to have deliberately gotten inside one of them to get at the wiring. Or maybe the problem was somewhere else?”
Barney sat back when the waitress put his new drink in front of him. “Okay, sounds like typical residential-type voltage. You push the doohickey and it completes the circuit and the whatsis lights up or tweets or whatever. That too technical for you?”
“I’m with you so far. Simple circuit, with a switch of some sort.”
“And I’d put money on it that there’s a subpanel for the exhibit, running off the main feed. It wouldn’t have been worth the effort to run new lines. You see anything like that?”
“Yes, there was something in the same room as the exhibit, I think, and Arabella said the exhibit had its own circuit. But shouldn’t the breaker have tripped when Joe got shocked? It did the first time, with Jason.”
“Should have, if there was an overload, but obviously, it didn’t.”
I nodded again. I appreciated his information, but I wasn’t getting the answers I needed. What had gone wrong?
“There any water around the exhibit? A fountain? Or somebody spilled something?” Barney asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Speaking of water, I’ve got to visit the head.” He stood up and made his way through the sparse crowd toward the restrooms.
Shelby looked at me. “Lady, what are you doing?”
“Trying to understand what happened. Trying to help Arabella. Heck, I don’t know. You know, if I hadn’t been there when Jason got zapped, I would have seen the article in the paper and thought, oh dear, how sad, and then forgotten about it. But I was there, so I know there were two separate events, and if somebody has a grudge against the museum or Arabella, it bothers me.”
“And so it should. But what are you going to do, even if you figure out how this could have happened? Don’t you think the police are doing the same thing?”
“I certainly hope so! This is just for my own peace of mind. Plus I’ll rest easier if I know that the Society is safe.”
“You think Barney thinks you’re crazy?”
I had to smile at that. “Maybe.”
Barney returned and sat down again. “Okay. So, no standing water. The critter wasn’t made of metal, so it’s not a conductor. That leaves the switch. If the switch wasn’t grounded right,
I tried to reconstruct what I’d seen. “I think-and this is only a guess-that Willy-” When Barney looked blank, I added, “That’s a weasel who’s sort of a friend of the hedgehog who’s the star of the show. The weasel is the one who zapped Jason. As I recall, Willy is standing behind a gate to greet visitors, and I’d guess the gate is metal, and is probably bolted to something below the floor. I remember wondering if it was meant to keep the smaller children from climbing on the animals, and this was their solution. They can reach Willy’s hand and his nose, I gather, but that’s about it.”
“Huh. I don’t suppose you know much about the building’s construction?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Old factory, brick exterior. But it’s easy enough to see-when they refitted it for a museum, they left a lot of the structure exposed, and you can see the old ductwork and girders from the first floor.”
“Ah,” Barney responded. “So let’s say the switch was the problem, and our guy was leaning over the railing to do whatever he was doing, and the railing was bolted to a metal girder for stability… that might just do it.”
“So if someone knew that the gate was metal and it was secured to a metal girder, then all they would have to do is mess around with the switch on Willy?”
“That’s about it.”
It sounded far too easy.
“What’s he do, this Willy guy? I mean, what’s the interactive part?” Barney asked.
“I think he shakes hands, or maybe hands out something. When I was there, Arabella wanted to show me Harriet first, and after that we were kind of distracted, so I never actually saw it working.”
Shelby spoke up. “I could make a good guess-I’ve given the books to plenty of my friends’ kids. Willy’s kind of a jerk, right?”
“So I gather, although apparently he has some redeeming qualities. He’s just misunderstood.”
Barney looked confused, but Shelby nodded. “Exactly,” she said. “So he’s going to be kind of smarmy, right? He wants people to like him, but he goes about it all wrong. Does he talk?”
“I don’t know-not that I heard.”
“Ladies, that stuff doesn’t matter,” Barney said. “As long as there’s a button to push, to make the model do whatever the heck it does, it completes the circuit.”
Obviously he was right. “So what does it take to change the switch and make it dangerous?”
“A screwdriver and a basic understanding of wiring. You could do it in a coupla minutes.”
That didn’t help at all. I checked my watch-it was getting late. “Thanks, Barney. I guess that answers my
