20. Mina

After Oscar had his kibble, I put on his harness and he and Morrie and I locked up and headed across the village green. As we walked, Morrie explained to me that the other night when he'd been out on secret wedding business, he'd found another footprint in the churchyard near the groundskeeper's shed.

What secret wedding business took you into the churchyard in the middle of the night?

I bit my tongue, because Heathcliff was in jail and Morrie would just say that he couldn't tell me anything without getting the okay from the wedding planner. But I didn't like it, not at all.

"Let's go have a look." I pushed open the lychgate and directed Oscar through the overgrown cemetery, remembering that it wasn't too long ago that we'd solved the murders of Jo's girlfriend Fiona and another girl named Jenna who were killed in the cemetery. Our feet crunched over a circle of charred earth where Dorothy Ingram and her Defense against Immorality, Adultery, Bestiality, Lucifer and the Occult group tried to burn a bunch of rare books and held a gun to my head.

I really didn't like that woman.

Morrie led me and Oscar over to the groundskeeper's shed. He bent to examine the ground. "The footprint was right over here…interesting."

"What's interesting?"

"It's gone now, of course, but I see new footprints – the same herringbone pattern. Wayne came through here, and he's not alone. Someone else walked here, wearing a small, square-heeled, pointed-toe shoe. A woman. Gorgeous, these prints are recent. Very recent. As in, they must've been made within the last half hour."

My heart raced. "Can you trace their path?"

"Luckily, we had rain last night, so the ground is damp. Although it's not lucky for my Brionis. Wait here for me." Morrie squelched his way around the churchyard, then returned to me. "I offer you my deductions based on my ex's lessons on studying footprints. Wayne climbed over the fence from that row of townhouses behind the church, and this woman walked into the cemetery from the village green. They both converged on the groundskeeper's hut." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Their prints go in, but they don't come out."

Morrie tried to peer in the windows, but he said that he couldn't see anything except a pile of blankets. He jiggled the lock. While he set about picking it, I pressed my ear to the door and heard scrambling inside. Someone whispered, "Ooooh, yes, baby, right there…"

"Morrie," I laughed. "There are two people having sex in there."

"There are not." Morrie pressed his ear to the door. "Oh, you're right. How deliciously sacrilegious. Give me a moment here with the lock…ah!"

The door fell open. Morrie, Oscar and I crashed into the room.

"Argh!"

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Arf arf arf!"

Some object sailed past my ear.

Morrie cracked up laughing. "Oh, gorgeous, you're going to love this. Beneath the pile of blankets in the corner are two very red-faced, very naked people. Wayne Bryant…and Dorothy Ingram."