He sat down, repressing the urge to peek through the keyhole to see her take off her nurse’s outfit, a vice he indulged himself in occasionally. You don’t need a peek when you got the whole package. There was a flash of a troublesome thought: his former secretary had confessed to him that she knew her husband was cheating when he took a shower the minute he got home to cleanse himself of the evidence. Perhaps the nose was a neglected instrument of intelligence. The bird dog finds the wee woodcock in the thickest of thickets and Hudley senses a bitch in heat over a mile away. Could a man develop super smell? It would be a disadvantage around toilets, unless one could turn it off and on, he conjectured, moderating his idea. Besides, Diana wouldn’t select a man in his sixties. Being married to a beautiful woman wasn’t all beer and skittles. Frequently at restaurants, parties, department stores, theater lines, he sensed the leer, the lust in men’s eyes. He was pleased that her involvement in the women’s movement included wearing clothes that deemphasized her sexuality. The exception was that she often neglected to wear undergarments and that upset him. “What if we get in a car accident?” he asked.

“I’ve seen a lot of accident victims. None of the girls were thinking about panties,” she replied.

Yet another version of Dracula was concluding on Creature Feature as the shower stopped. The whiskey mellowed him and he was aroused. Why did people love Dracula? Warlock never wanted to bite a woman in the neck, and in his entire life had never conjured up a single rape fantasy. When Diana’s lib friends were on the muscle about rape he liked to remind them that there hadn’t been a single rape on the police files in Leelanau County in the past decade. Gretchen said that there had been an attempted rape five years before, but the guy couldn’t get a hardon. Without thinking Warlock had replied “that’s his problem” and they had brayed him into retreating into the kitchen to make them snacks. They insisted that most rapes were not reported, and the police files were only the tip of the iceberg. He brought in the Nachos and replied that up here there wasn’t a tip to indicate an iceberg and that their arguments were tautological. When they demanded he define “tautological” he discovered he had forgotten—Philosophy 203 was a long time ago. His trump card was to call his father, the great detective, in Minneapolis.

“Dad, what about rape?”

“Did you rape someone, Johnny?”

“No, Dad. I’m in an argument with Diana’s friends.”

“I’m watching Monday Night Football. Johnny, I need to get away from the job.”

“Sorry, I just need a few facts. They got me in a corner.”