“‘Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.’” The wise persons all popped the tops of their boxes and showed the contents to Mary, who nodded with approval. “‘And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.’” At this, the wise men looked anxiously back the way they’d come, and then set down their boxes at the foot of the manger and tiptoed off in the other direction.

Then the choir started us off with “Joy to the World” and at the end of the song, the wise men came back. All the participants took a bow while we applauded, and then all the parents and grandparents put away their cell phones and cameras and the children scampered out to join their families in the pews for the rest of the service.

A good thing we weren’t as tightly scheduled as we had been over the last few days, because after the service was over, everyone milled around for at least half an hour, praising all the pageant participants and sharing the latest gossip and generally reveling in the fact that Trinity was ours, not just for the moment, for the whole rest of the day and all day tomorrow. Doubtless all the other churches were feeling a similar sense of relief.

When everyone finally began drifting away, Michael took his mother and our two dinosaurs for lunch at Mother and Dad’s while I headed over to the police station for my interview with the chief.

I took the long way around, in part so I could drive by as many churches as possible. In fact, I cruised through the parking lots of several. The choir was in full and glorious voice at New Life Baptist Church. The parking lot at St. Byblig’s was full, and there were cars parked up and down the road so far in both directions that a couple of parishioners were using their vans to haul latecomers to the door. An early service had just ended at the Presbyterian church and even though it was still below freezing, many of the congregation were lingering in small groups in the parking lot. From the clouds of breath steam rising from most of the groups they were all talking a mile a minute. I exchanged waves with Randall and at least a dozen other Shiffleys. On the lawn of the Methodist church, several people were laughing happily as they hauled away the last few inanimate Nativity figures and shoveled the area, in preparation for this afternoon’s live Nativity.