Chapter 8
Michaela Mantoparte was young to be the top field investigator for Credential. How she had attained her position was somewhat unorthodox. She had joined the Credential department about ten years earlier, at the tender age of eighteen. She had started as an assistant field examiner, and had proven pretty bad in the beginning. But Micky, as everyone called her, was such a pretty little thing, with bright red hair, big brown eyes, a bunnylike nose, and a pert little mouth, as well as a gorgeous body underneath, that no one had the heart to fire her in the beginning.
Not that anyone made physical headway with Mickey. She might have been dumb in some respects, but when it came to her body, Micky was very particular who touched it. At the time, she had been a virgin, and no one had been allowed to touch her. She was shuttled from one field investigator to another, all of whom taught her a little of what they knew, so that eventually Micky knew more than all of them. However, all the field investigators at Credential had been in their mid-fifties at the time, and as they retired, one by one, new, young assistants were being hired. Soon, Micky was made a full-fledged field investigator. By that time she was twenty-two, and fairly good at her job. She was also no longer a virgin, though she had given her virginity to a boy she had hoped to marry. Unfortunately, it just didn't work out, and after a few months, they separated.
As the years passed, other investigators retired, and new assistants were hired, while former assistants were slowly promoted to being full investigators. But when Micky reached the age of twenty-six, she suddenly discovered that everyone who had been there before her, in the field, had retired. She was the senior investigator, and she got all the tough cases. Surprisingly, she did rather well.
As Carol had observed, Micky had become very hot for almost anything worthwhile in pants. It had nothing to do with her job. She just liked to fuck like the bunny she so resembled. She had a very short sex fuse. What was more, she knew how to come, and she came one helluva lot.
So Carol was assigned to discreetly follow without Micky knowing about it, and she was to observe Micky's behavior. What she observed that particular Tuesday should have been enough to kill Randall Forrest's case. Unfortunately, for Credential, though fortunately for both, Micky and Randall Forrest, Carol didn't think to bring either a camera or a tape recorder with a unidirectional microphone along, and so it would be Carol's word against that of the other two.
That Tuesday, Carol sat outside the Credential building in her car, a five-year-old Chevy Malibu. She watched as Micky came out, all flashy in a bright red coat to go with her hair, and slid behind the wheel of a bright-red, brand-new Firebird, and drove off. Carol followed.
The address was correct, in Old Westbury on Long Island, where a lot of the elite lived. It was a large house with a turret-shaped living room that extended out beyond the rest of the house.
Micky parked her car in front of the steps leading up to the house, in this case a flight of narrow cement stairs, thirty-five of them. Carol waited until Micky had rung the bell and had been let into the house, and then she got out of her car and climbed the same stairs. She had no doubt the architect had designed this house for himself. Once at the top of the stairs, she circled the house, walking on a flagstoned path around the house. She saw a little extension at the rear of the red-brick mansion, and approaching it, saw it had a slightly open window. Standing off to the side, she peered in, and noted it was where the architect did his work. There was the stool, the workbench, the pigeonholed armoire wherein he stored his rolled-up designs. Off to the left was a sofa.
Micky preceded Rand into the office, and the moment Carol saw him she was certain he was going to be trouble. Rand Forrest was six-feet, three-inches tall, with soft, brown wavy hair, a deep tan complexion, dark, dancing brown eyes, a short, straight nose, and a rugged jawline. He was the kind of man most women flip for, and Carol detested him immediately. She detested him because something deep down inside her wanted to love him. But she, herself refused to accept love for a man, and so turned the feeling to automatic hatred. He was wearing a simple short-sleeved brown shirt and brown slacks. Micky, now that she had her coat off, revealed herself to be wearing a pink sweater and a flaming red skirt.
As she watched, she also listened, and for the first fifteen minutes it was all straightforward business. He was showing Micky various notes from the different doctors who had attended him. He showed her the dates, then showed her his policy, one that had a no-week elimination period in it, and one that would pay as much as two thousand dollars a week for every week he was out sick. For such a policy he was paying four thousand dollars a year in premiums.
Micky looked at everything, evaluated it with everything the company had given her, and finally said, "You have a reasonable claim, Mr. Forrest. I think we can convince the company to pay it. I think I had better be going now."
"I don't think you really want to go," Rand said to her, and that was what made Carol suddenly aware of his charm.