I so appreciate all your replies. The consensus is clearly that he's lying about this phone. I think he is, too.
When I'm emotional, I tend to use too many words. I tried to be as concise as possible in explaining and think I created some confusion. I also found out more information about his name on the voice mail that rolled to his email regarding having added minutes to the account. So, while it changes little to nothing, I don't want to misrepresent this and need to clarify a couple of things.
He pulled up all of the emails he has that are voice mails. Every one of them beings with: "(last name,first name), you have received a (however long the message is) call from (the number or name)" caller. There is a link in the email to listen to the voice message.
So, the message appeared to address him by name, but that was the system using his name as it is listed in the company directory.
When he/we called Tracfone, the first thing he said was that he wanted them to look up his account, that he had received a voicemail about adding airtime to a phone he didn't have and it had created a crisis in his marriage. The rep had a difficult time finding the account without a name. She looked up his name as it was on the email, but no account under that name existed. So he asked her to look it up by his office phone number where the voicemail was left. She found an account.
It was a newly created account and there was no name associated with it. Because neither of us provided the tracfone number (I don't know it, it wasn't in the message and he denies having the phone so he claimed not to have it either), she could only give us limited information about the account.
She said when the phone was purchased (within a 2 day time period...gave me the two days but couldn't be specific since husband had already clarified it was not his account), that it was activated Tuesday when the airtime was added and showed no use beyond activation at that point. She told me the kind of phone it is and said she would call the owner to see if they had mis-typed the primary contact number (my husband's office) when they put it into the account and ask the owner to contact me to clarify this mess.
I know there are all kinds of things my husband can do to throw me off-track when that call comes in if the phone is his. It really doesn't offer me any confirmation. my hope is that I will get the tracfone number on my phone if/when the "unknown owner" calls me. That will give me something to work with on my own to investigate it further,I'm hoping.
My husband's claim that he was "set up" boiled down to believing someone had mistyped a digit of their number in the acct. He apparently didn't mean "set up" in the literal sense.
I'm sitting here typing all this out and it makes so little sense to me that I almost feel like *I* am lying in telling the convoluted story - I know he probably is.
The only odd thing that occurred during the call with tracfone was that when they offered to call the phone right then to see if it rang in my house or the "real" (?) owner picked up, it might answer some questions. She offered to do that because she couldn't give out the number to us. The odd thing was husband immediately got up and went into the closet (we were calling from our bedroom). I didn't notice that at the time (stupid) - it only occurred to me later. I proceeded to take the phone and go outside to talk to her privately and try to get more information from her.
Was the mysterious phone he doesn't own in the closet and he ran to silence it? I have no idea. I hate that it didn't register that happened until hours later as I was thinking about this scary mess.
After he went to sleep, I searched every inch of his truck (thank you for suggested places to look that wouldn't have occurred to me), the closet, his briefcase and every possible nook and cranny in this house and the garage. Nothing. If he has it and it was in the closet, he probably did something with it while I was outside on the phone. Can't believe I missed that.
I can't search his work without him present. He works in a secured facility. It would be after hours when we could go. I think that's futile. It's been 2 days, created utter havoc, and I don't think it's in a discoverable place.
We have an appt with both our therapists this afternoon. Please pray I get answers that are real. Whatever that reality is, I want the opportunity to make my own choices according to it - not have lies make choices for me that I would not make if I knew the truth.
I'm SO sorry for this novel.I really felt things needed to be better clarified. Well, as clearly as I understand them at this point.
ETA corrected pronoun and punctuation.
[This message edited by spinningwheel at 9:37 AM, September 6th (Friday)]