Unattended battery drain

My 2003 Focus Wagon wouldn't start after a several day period of inactivity (battery dead). Okay the battery's kinda old so I replaced it. Everything seemed Okay, so I figured the battery was the problem. A few weeks later I parked the car at the Milwaukee airport and when I returned after 4 days, the battery was dead again. Got a jump and everything seemed normal again.

Several days later while waiting in line at the Bank drive-up window, I shut the engine off waiting for a slow teller and noticed the instrument cluster flickering on and off even though the key was in the off position. Pulled the key and it still flickered. Ahah! the source of the unattended battery was now explained. Now WHAT! A sneaky short somewhere in the wiring harness? That's not good news.

Did a google search and found many people complaining of flickering instruments while the car was running but only a couple complaining of flickering during power off. The solution in all cases was to replace the instrument cluster. Just happened to have an extra lying around and installed it. Voila! Problem has ceased to exist so far. Will report back later if problem returns.