i want to see if a short is causing a drain on my car battery.

i have a digital multimeter. one way i theorized was to connect it in
series with the battery via the earth lead and negative terminal.


is this logic sound? or will i fry my multimeter? is there any other
way to find a short (apart from scraping the earth lead to the neg
terminal to see if it arcs - which on my car it doesnt)

thx