Was gone for the weekend, so didn't reply sooner.
Could be in the breaker box. My washer/dryer stopped working and I head and saw a flash from the circuit box area. The circuit breaker wasn't tripped., and toggling it back and forth didn't put them back on. I called maintenance (I live in an apartment) and they looked in the box. The wire from the washer,dryer breaker had come loos over the years (about 20) and had shorted out the ground bus bar. The plastic brackets that it was screwed on by had melted. The rest of the circuits had worked fine. They said I was lucky I didn't have a fire.
My father had an uncle that would test for live wires while remodeling by wetting his fingers , touching bare end and say "Yep, that one's live!"