The insurance agent steepled his fingers, balanced his chin on the tips and tilted back in his chair, waiting for my reaction.
All I could come up with was a simple "Can you tell me why?"
"May I be frank?"
"If it's not too much to ask."
"My supervisors are investigating the possibility that the claim is fraudulent."
"You're accusing me of trashing my own place?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing .
"More likely that someone was paid to do it--"
"Why would I do that?"
"Mr. Ciccarelli, please understand that in no way am I accusing you of having done this at this time," he said, opening his hands as if to implore me to believe that he had my best interests at heart. "However, we've been apprised of some information that we feel we must follow through on. We must exhaust all avenues--"
"What information?!?." This was too much.
He hesitateed a moment before he proceeded. "What we've been able to establish is that somebody came in after hours, disabled your alarm--"
I shifted in my seat, angrily. "One of my employees forgot to turn it on. I fired him the next day, and he's already been questioned by the police."
"Well, unless he was the perpetrator, you made a mistake. Your security company tells us that the alarm was set at or around the normal time it is every night."
"Yes?" I could tell he was cherishing every moment of this. The bastard acted like he was Hercule Poirot.
"Somebody came in later, disabled the set alarm and then did the damage."
"What code did they use?"
"Excuse me?" His eyebrow went up on one side, giving his face an odd tilt.
"Each of my employees has a private alarm code. What was the second code?"
He shuffled through some papers in the folder. "The Montgomery print-out tells me...92667."
"That's Mike's code."
"I'm not finished. That was the first code. The second code was...90210."
I sank back into my chair. "That's impossible."
"Do you want to see the print-out from the alarm company?"
"That's not necessary. I recognize the code."
"Whose is it?"
"It's mine."
