Putting the Pieces Together

I found the hotel receipt in the drawer were he keeps his condom stash. I was in there because I was going to count them. I had counted them before I went into the hospital and I wanted to see if any had gone missing when I was gone. That in itself not only says that I suspected “something”, but that it pretty much screams, “Affair”. Even though I now had what I considered solid evidence, I felt I had to be sure of everything before I started making accusations. My mind went on this ridiculous attempt to try and explain it. I could picture these two mini-me’s in my head arguing back and forth.
Me 1: “What if I’m wrong?”
Me 2: “You know you’re not!“
Me 1: “What if there is a perfectly logical explanation?”
Me 2: “For him hiding a receipt to The Marriott Long Warf in Boston, in his underwear draw?”
Me 1: “Well, there could be.”
Me 2: “Are you freaking serious?”
I even thought of a few ways to explain the name and address on the top of the receipt…Charlot Babylon, 1023 Continental Dr…her name and address. It could be the person who took the reservation, right? Perhaps he knows her husband. Yes, that could be it. Dick and her husband know each other. He called him to ask if his wife could make a reservation for him to stay at that hotel. Maybe he made the reservation for us as a surprise for our anniversary before he knew I was going to have surgery. He could have been so caught up in his concern for my well being that he forgot to cancel the reservation. Rather than just waste it he went in town and stayed overnight, alone. After all, he’s not one to waste money and he would have been home alone anyway, so why not? Man, oh man, it’s amazing the crap you’re willing to try and believe when something like this happens. Needless to say, I could not convince myself that there was any other explanation than he took another woman to a hotel while I was lying in a hospital bed recovering from major surgery.

During the next 8 weeks while I was recovering from my hysterectomy I spent a lot of time trying to figure out just exactly what was going on with Dick and his extracurricular activities. I used various online search tools during this investigative phase such as Intellus, Reverse Phone look-up and Net Detective. Net Detective proved to be quite valuable in gathering information. With it I was even able to find out when and how much she bought and paid for her house, not that I needed to know that, but it made me feel dam good that I could. I checked the cell phone bills and found that he had called the number that was on the now infamous hotel receipt, while he was in Miami in May. I also noticed that there were numerous calls to two other numbers that same week. A report from Intellus provided the information that both these numbers belonged to cell phones, owners name…Charlot. Hmmm…where have I seen that name before, oh yes, the HOTEL RECIEPT!!! Now I know this is a huge red flag, but playing the devil’s advocate I told myself that if someone was to look up his cell phone number it would come back as owners name…Betty. I wasn’t grasping at straws; I was just making sure to cover all bases. I didn’t want to leave him any way to plausibly explain it. So, I just added that bit of information to my ever-growing “Spouse-ectomy” file and continued on my fact-finding mission.