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“Look, they’re up to something!” said Harriet.

“Oh, boy,” said Rufus. “What a bunch of clowns.”

And indeed they were a bunch of clowns, as they now had shoved one of the kids into the fire, and he’d only barely been able to jump over it without getting badly burned. Unfortunately for him, his pants leg had caught fire, and he had to pour his beer on the flames to douse them. He didn’t look happy that he had to waste precious alcohol on such an ignoble cause and was cursing freely, then throwing the empty beer can at his buds.

Two of the kids now busied themselves by taking selfies with the dead person.

“I can’t watch this, Max,” said Dooley.

“Yeah, this is just super gross,” said Harriet, but she still watched with glittering eyes.

“I think I’m going to get Gran to call the cops,” I announced, as it was obvious now that these kids were engaging in plenty of illegal activities and that this had to stop.

And so I volunteered to hurry back to the house, and apprise Gran of the facts. The old lady was still engrossed in her book, but when I told her about the kids and the dead person, she immediately agreed to call it in, and moments later the police had been notified. By the time I rejoined my friends, the first police car already came driving up, its lights out, and when a second car rolled to a stop, the first officers had already intervened, and were asking the kids for their ID, and making the first arrests.

Half an hour later the entire group of youthful vandals had been collared and tucked into squad cars and driven off to the station. The dead person, unfortunately, was another matter, since even the officers apparently didn’t know what the correct procedure was in a case like this. But since a good cop is never stumped for long, soon an ambulance came driving up, loaded up the remains and soon peace returned.

And so the six of us decided we hadn’t seen enough dead people for one night, and headed down to the graveyard for a nightcap.

29

I don’t know if you’ve ever had to find a freshly dug grave in the middle of a very large graveyard? I can assure you it’s not an easy task—tedious, too. Unfortunately for us, Rufus and Fifi’s noses, formidable though they may be, disappointed us in the sense that they had no trouble finding plenty of freshly dug graves—looked like a lot of people had recently met their maker—but none of them contained the person we were looking for. And so after three hours of traversing the graveyard from north to south and east to west and back, we all gathered at the entrance, weary and more thana little disappointed.

“Nothing,” said Fifi, summing up the situation with admirable succinctness.

“Wherever Angel Church is, it certainly isn’t here,” Rufus agreed.

“But she has to be here,” I said. “My theory is perfect!”

“Well, your theory may be perfect, Max,” said Harriet, “but clearly it’s just that: a theory.”

“Did we really miss cat choir for this nonsense?” Brutus grumbled, massaging his weary paws.

“What are you guys doing here?” suddenly a voice rang out from the darkness. But then I saw that it was Shanille, and I decided she’d been sent by heaven.

“Shanille, you have to help us,” I said. “I happen to know for a fact that Father Reilly killed Angel, and that he buried her out here, but the question is: where?”

“Max, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I’ve solved Angel’s murder, but all that’s missing is the proof!”

Shanille stared at me, then, with dignity and poise, said,“Max, you’re an idiot.”

“See, Max?” said Brutus. “Even Shanille thinks you’re way off base this time.”

“But…”

“No, Max,” said Shanille. “Not another word. Father Reilly is a saint, and he would never harm another living soul—let alone his daughter.”

“But he—”

“No means no, Max! Forget about it. It didn’t happen.”

I must confess I deflated to some extent, like a balloon at the end of a kids birthday party. Shanille, of course, is Father Reilly’s cat, so it’s safe to say she’s highly prejudiced in her human’s favor. But that’s just the thing: she is Father Reilly’s cat, and so if something untoward had happened, surely she would have noticed? Unless of course the priest had managed to hide the truth even from his own exquisitely inquisitive feline?

My mind was spinning. Could I have been so wrong?

“Oh, by the way, congratulations on the upcoming wedding,” said Dooley.

“What wedding?” asked Shanille, still regarding me unhappily.

“Why, Father Reilly and Marigold, of course. He told us all about it this afternoon, when we interviewed him.”

“Father Reilly said that he’ll marry Marigold?”

“Oh, absolutely. He said he’s given his life to his church, and now it’s time to give the rest of it to the woman he loves. He’s going to announce it next Sunday during mass—he’s writing a whole sermon and everything.”

“Oh, Dooley,” said Shanille, and even though it was hard to know for sure, I think that her eyes were actually glittering with unshed tears!

“Don’t cry, Shanille,” said Dooley. “It’s good news, isn’t it?”