Larry, thanks for the prompt response and the interest: I describe my situation here, but I also thought of a possible source of the problem.
Box 1 (location with Keypadlinc): Two romex wire sets, one is "load" set, one set as output to series of outdoor floodlights. The grounds from each were crimped together, and the whites were connected with wire nuts. The black load wire was attached to the black lead on the switch, the red switch wire was connected to the other black lead (going to the floodlights). The white was added to the wire nuts for white and the ground was connected to the ground wires. So far so good and everything worked as planned.
Then today, I added a new set of white, green, and purple to be output to box two. White was added to the white wire nut, green was twisted and taped with the ground wires and purple was added and connected to the black load wire in box one.
Box two only has the purple, green and white wires for now.
Box three is the start of the floodlight array. It is basic. The black and white (plus ground) from box one attach to wires for the floodlights, plus similar colored wires to additional boxes.
The black wire heading to box three and the black load wire of box 1 were the two wires that when tested acheived a 50 volt load. That went away when all of the wires in box three were disconnected from one another. Could this have been caused by either a short between white and ground, or if the wires in any of the three subsequent flood light boxes were crossed? This is where I hit a snag.
POSSIBLE SOURCE: I thought of something over dinner. I did drill three holes through the stucco, one for the three wires to go to the outdoor box, and the other two for the anchors to attach the box. It is possible, but not likely that I hit a wire. The holes were not drilled where it appeared the wires were headed from box 1. I would have instantly thought this was the culprit except for the 50 volt reads on what was supposed to be an unconnected wire (leading to box three).
Another point about my house -- I don't know if this is normal but on every outlet I tested, a 110 volt read also occurs when meter leads are put on black and ground; resistance testing (ohms) on the white and ground sockets result in virtually no resistance (the needle goes off the chart).
What would happen if I used the ground as the neutral and the ground? Remember this is feeding outdoor lights and a future outdoor ceiling fan. That alone is cause for concern.
