Mother was immediately drafted to give an opinion on some fine point of upholstering—not that she ever sewed much, apart from doing the odd bit of crewelwork, because she thought it an elegant thing to be seen doing. But she was a very expert consumer of upholstery services. I strolled over to talk to Minerva.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“I’m optimistic that we’ll have everything done by Christmas Eve,” she said. “It won’t be a problem if we stay up rather late finishing, will it?”

“You’d have to be pretty loud out here for us to hear you,” I said. “Just lock up when you leave. How’s the smell removal going?”

“Slowly. If I ever catch the wretches who did that to our lovely church—” She broke off and set her jaw, as if forcibly restraining language no self-respecting Baptist matron would know, much less use in public.

“I tell you one thing,” she said. “This duck thing has confounded my theory of the crime.”

“I find myself wondering if your theory was also the chief’s,” I said. “But I know better than to ask. What is your theory?”

“That the pranks have something to do with the choir,” she said.

I nodded agreement. Should I tell her about what I’d overheard? No, the chief would probably be annoyed if I tried to involve Minerva, and I wasn’t at all sure a proper Baptist matron would approve of Rose Noire’s premonitions. Besides, she was already keeping a close eye on Lightfoot.

“But I haven’t seen any choir events scheduled in the Catholic church,” she went on. “So there goes that theory.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “What if St. Byblig’s wasn’t the intended target?”

She raised one eyebrow and cocked her head.

“You’re keeping the New Life building locked up pretty tight, right?”

“Tight as a tick,” she said.

“And I suspect Trinity wasn’t left standing wide open last night.”

“No,” she said. “I was one of the last to leave—I was helping make sure we’d left everything at least as clean as we found it. And your pastor was there to lock the door behind us, and when I told her she should go home and get some rest, she said she would as soon as she made sure everything was secure.”

“That fits,” I said. “Imagine you’re the prankster, and you drive your truck full of ducks up to your intended target and you can’t get in. Are you just going to give up and take them back where you stole them? Or are you going to look around for someplace else to cause trouble?”

“Ye-es,” she said slowly. “But why the Catholics?”

“St. Byblig’s isn’t far from Trinity or New Life,” I said.

“The Methodists are closer,” she said.