Crunch Time for Lost Love’s Laborers

While modern science has yet to prove the existence of Cupid, a toga-clad babe floating over our heads with a bow and arrow, there certainly are anti-Cupids around us. They sever as many relationships as they save and go by the name “private investigator.”

Those with cheating hearts who plan to spend Valentine’s Day with sideline sweeties, beware: The anti-Cupids are about.

Along with florists and lingerie vendors, detectives nationwide report doing big business around Valentine’s Day. Though adultery follows no calendar, Feb. 14 provides an easy opportunity to catch a cheater in the act.

“With wives and husbands married for 20 years, [the magic] is over,” says Mike O’Connell, a Washington, D.C., detective who will have all 10 of his employees on the streets Saturday. “But with a new sweetheart, Valentine’s Day is a special day.”

Or, as veteran Los Angeles private investigator Don Crutchfield puts it, on Valentine’s Day “they might not take care of their wives, but they sure take care of their girlfriends.”

Which means they get careless, and, as a result, their spouses get suspicious.

Let’s say some guy--and usually, but certainly not always, it’s a guy--needs to get roses for both his wife and his girlfriend. He buys those roses at the same store, leaves the receipt in his pants pocket, and his wife does the laundry. Or worse, he gets the notes mixed up. His wife will be on the phone to a PI before the first petal falls.

“Usually it’s pretty easy to catch people around this time,” says Jerry Palace, a detective at Check a Mate in New York. Palace spoke from a cell phone while he was on the trail of a wayward husband (a police officer).

For some couples, the suspicion starts right after Christmas, when a credit-card statement arrives, or receipts turn up showing some unfamiliar purchases--a necklace, say, or a copy of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” By the time Valentine’s Day rolls around, the suspicion may be strong enough to warrant professional action.

For an hourly fee plus expenses, a PI will follow your partner--to a restaurant, to a hotel, even to the Bahamas.

“A last-minute business trip is always the big excuse,” O’Connell says. He plans to spend this Valentine’s Day somewhere sunny--perhaps California, where a client’s hubby has an “engagement.” But he’s hoping a Jamaica visit will pop up between now and Saturday.

Two years ago, he had a client who sat round the clock by her sick husband’s side in a hospital room. Meanwhile, O’Connell tailed the man’s mistress--who dressed up as a nurse so she could visit him on Valentine’s Day.

Crutchfield says he’s sure he’s going to catch a cheater this week. He has one client who, when emptying her husband’s gym bag, found panties and a bra. At first she thought they were hers. Crutchfield recalls her telling him: “I thought, ‘What kind of kinky [expletive] is that?’ Then I realized it wasn’t my panties and bra.” This Valentine’s Day weekend, the wife is going out of town, providing the perfect opportunity for an intimate threesome--the husband, the mistress and the detective.

Married couples are not the only ones with suspicions. George Hamilton, a Chicago detective, reports that many of his clients want to know whether their new boyfriends or girlfriends are hiding other lovers.

“They say, ‘I’m engaged to so-and-so, but he won’t tell me where he lives.’ ”

Detectives in the adultery business don’t actually destroy relationships, of course; they’re simply bearers of bad news. And once they’ve served their clients with photographs and videotape, they usually try to stay uninvolved.

A.G. Lang, a detective in Gadsden, Ala., says his clients often reconcile afterward. Still, the aftermath of an investigation can get messy. Lang has had clients prevent their cheating spouses from seeing their children, and he’s also had clients circulate incriminating audiotapes to everyone around town, “including the preacher.”