Valentine’s Day is a huge day for greeting-card companies, florists, and boon for candy makers but
it’s also a major crisis day for anyone who is having an affair. Valentine’s Day is the one day when everyone is expected to do
something romantic for their spouse or lover — and if someone has
both, it’s a serious problem.

"If anything is going on, it will be happening on that
day," says Irene Smith, who says business at her Discreet
Investigations detective agency in Golden, Colo., as much as doubles –
to as many as 12 cases some years — on Valentine’s Day.

Martin Investigative Services in Anaheim, Calif., has
been booked up for Valentine’s Day assignments since the end of
January. Founder Thomas Martin, a former agent of the U.S. Justice
Department, says the firm, which charges $95 an hour, will handle 14 to
20 suspected infidelity cases that day, nearly double its usual load.

One of Mr. Martin’s Valentine’s Day clients is a
doctor whose wife, also a doctor, aroused his suspicions when she told
him she would be changing her regular daytime shift on Tuesday and
instead working until 8 p.m. Like virtually all private detectives, Mr.
Martin won’t reveal his client’s names. He says private eyes from the
agency also will be following an attorney who told his wife he can’t
have lunch with her on Valentine’s Day because he’ll be in court; the
wife, also an attorney, knows that her husband always gets a lunch
break in court.

The Institute for Divorce Financial Analysts, a
Southfield, Mich., trade group of professionals trained to review
divorce settlements, says filings typically spike in mid-February.
"It’s so consistent I can’t deny a pattern," says Natalie Nelson, a
divorce financial analyst in Boulder, Colo.

Indeed, divorce lawyers say they frequently turn up
evidence of Valentine’s Day duplicity when they review financial
documents. Credit-card receipts from restaurants or purchases at fancy
jewelry stores are the most common giveaways, says Heidi Harris, a
partner at New York law firm Sheresky Aronson & Mayefsky. New York
attorney Raoul Felder concurs: The kinds of purchases documented for
Feb. 14 "give an indication of how serious the relationship is," he
says.

Christine Gallagher, a 43-year-old writer in Los
Angeles, was so incensed after she caught her boyfriend cheating on
Valentine’s Day that she launched a Web site called RevengeLady.com,
where she gives advice on how to get back at people. Ms. Gallagher was
dating the man, whom she declines to name, for over a year when he told
her he had to go away over Valentine’s Day to visit a friend dying of
cancer in Switzerland. Ms. Gallagher spent the holiday alone at home
with her 180-pound mastiff, Thomas.

‘Classic Conflict Day’

It wasn’t until several weeks later that Ms. Gallagher
learned the truth. As she was out walking Thomas she was approached by
a woman who said she had just returned from a vacation in Italy — with
Ms. Gallagher’s boyfriend. Before coming up with the idea for her Web
site, Ms. Gallagher broke up with the man, then found an unusual way to
get back at him: She unscrewed the driver’s-side door panel of his
beloved Audi coupe and stuck a marble inside, figuring that the rattle
would drive him crazy. Sure enough, it did. He took the car to mechanic
after mechanic until one finally found the marble — and a little note
Ms. Gallagher had included: "So you finally found it, sucker." Ms.
Gallagher says her ex-boyfriend now lives in New Zealand; he couldn’t
be located for comment.

Indeed, planning a "business trip" that falls over
Valentine’s Day is a typical mistake cheaters make, says New York
detective Stephen Davis. Mr. Davis handled a case in which a husband
took his mistress to Florida for a two-day holiday, claiming he needed
to be away for work. Though it was part of an ongoing case, the Feb. 14
rendezvous was "one more nail in the coffin," Mr. Davis says. The
detective verified the tryst with photos. "It’s a classic conflict
day," he says.

This year, Valentine’s Day spending is expected to
reach $13.7 billion, an increase from $13.19 billion in 2005, according
to the National Retail Federation. But clearly, some of the dough
shelled out that day won’t go for proclaiming love, but for verifying
it. Just in time for Feb. 14, a New York company called Tru-test Inc.
has released an $80 DNA collection kit that it says will help detect
whether a partner has been intimate with someone else by analyzing
suspicious stains. "I thought this was a good time to do it, because
this is when people want to see if a spouse is cheating," says kit
creator David Vitalli. Manhattan detective agency Beau Dietl &
Associates, which charges clients $100 per detective per hour for
surveillance, says it expects Tuesday to be such a busy day that the
firm will need to call in six part-timers to work on adultery projects.