I’m talking about honesty now, and according to Dan, that’s the one area of my moral makeup that needs improvement. A whole lot of improvement. You know what Dan says? He says I can’t be trusted-that I don’t even know how to be honest. He insists I wouldn’t know the truth if it walked right in the door and kicked me on the shin. He claims I’ve told him more lies during the one and a half years of our stormy relationship than Lucy ever dreamed of telling Ricky.

But that’s not true! I swear it isn’t! Honest to God!

Okay, forget I said that. The truth is, I have told Dan a few fibs in the past-but not so very many, I promise! And the pitiful, self-defensive expression of a few little white falsehoods doesn’t make me a dishonest person! Not in the true sense of the word. Not in the devious, unscrupulous, mean-spirited sense. No way, Doris Day! I can honestly say that I’m a very sincere, conscientious, and steadfast individual, and I’ve never, ever, ever told Dan a lie unless I had to.

If Dan would just accept the fact that I work for a detective magazine and stop carrying on about how much danger I’m always putting myself in, we wouldn’t have a problem in the world. No lie. If he hadn’t forbidden me to work on any more unsolved murder stories and threatened to end our relationship if I did… well, then I wouldn’t have had to keep my more dangerous story investigations secret from him or create a single coverup to hide my activities.

You see what I’m saying? Dan makes me lie. And it’s all because I’m searching for the truth! How ironic is that? Jeez! Doesn’t Dan realize that we’re both working for the same thing? Can’t he see that the triumph of justice matters just as much to me as it does to him? If only he would stop worrying about me so much! If only he would support me in my undercover quest for the facts instead of demanding that I stop “meddling” in police business and putting myself in peril.