A/N:It was inevitable that I would eventually complete at least SOMETHING in the Sherlock fandom given how much I love it. I've actually started several stories of length, but it appears I only have a completed oneshot to offer for now.
Also, it's possible I will someday make the adventures of Mari McGrady a running series. It has potential to serve as the nexus of a multiverse of insurance disasters. But, again, apparently not yet. I seem to have a rather fussy muse.
This story has not been Brit-picked. I don't even know anyone to ask. Sorry!
Dedicated to all who work in or with call centers. You know what I'm talking about.
Enjoy!
Risk Class: Risk class, in insurance underwriting, is a grouping of insureds with a similar level of risk.
"Good morning and thank you for calling Total Insurance. This is the Claims Department, Mari McGrady speaking. How may I help you?"
"I need to know about my liability for explosions."
"Explosions?" Mari repeated in surprise. The caller's voice sounded absolutely strained and angry, which was not at all uncommon for someone calling in an insurance claim, but there was more than a little disbelief in her tone as well. As if she were still trying to figure out what had happened.
"Yes. Explosions," the woman repeated firmly. Mari typed quickly, pulling up the policy from the details gathered by the automated system.
"Are you Amelia Patterson, of 555 104th Avenue, New York City?" Mari asked, pulling data together with the swift speed of someone who has worked in a call center for most of her adult life.
"Yes, that's me." Now Ms Patterson's voice was becoming impatient and Mari could hear voices on the other line growing in volume though still indistinct.
"Can you tell me what happened while I check your coverage?" she asked politely.
"Well, I rented out a couple of rooms to a pair of British boys for a month. Said they were working on something with the police, and they paid in advance so I didn't ask too many questions. But then, last night, I heard this big noise and I found everything destroyed!"
"Ms Patterson, your flat is hardly destroyed," sniffed a deep, accented voice with a superior air.
"Oh yes it is!" she returned, seeming to have forgotten that she was on the phone at all. "Look at the walls! The carpet! You're lucky you didn't blow a hole through the roof!"
"Please, Ms Patterson, we're really very sorry," came another voice, also British by the accent, but softer, more consoling than the first.
"Well, you should be! You better believe you're paying for everything after this!" The woman's anger was growing and Mari could feel an argument brewing, even if she wasn't exactly a participant.
"I assure you, you will be fully compensated. Right Sherlock?"
"John, focus. I need you to look through these files…"
"Ms Patterson," Mari spoke gently but with some volume, trying to get the woman's attention, "can you describe the damage for me?"
The next few minutes consisted of the woman furiously detailing the burned and stained remains of carpet and wallpaper in her spare bedroom, two shattered windows, and several items destroyed and variously embedded in the walls and remaining furniture. At the same time, derisive and apologetic comments flowed from the other end, the deeper voice quick to dismiss and the lighter baritone trying to serve as peacemaker. Mari took the details down diligently, shaking her head to herself.
"Ms Patterson, did you enter into any kind of written agreement with your tenants regarding possible damages?" Mari asked when she had a vivid-enough picture for the paperwork.
"Um…I said something in an email, I think," she replied, hesitant for the first time.
"Do you still have that email?"
"I don't know. Maybe?"
"I do," spoke up the more polite of the young men in the background. "I can forward it to you."
"Thank you," Ms Patterson replied heavily, her anger certainly not spent, but seemingly directed at the other man more than the helpful one.
"I'll need that correspondence as well as a copy of anything you might have asked them to sign," Mari continued professionally, "and we'll have to send someone to inspect the damage."
"Impossible," came the other voice. There was a moment of shifting and a surprised "Hey!" from Ms Patterson and then a new voice spoke into the phone directly. "My work has been inconvenienced enough. I cannot allow further interruptions at this time."
"Give that back!" Ms Patterson demanded; at the same time, the other voice called, "Sherlock! You can't just…"
"With whom am I speaking?" Mari asked patiently, keeping her eye-rolling almost totally out of her voice.
"Sherlock Holmes."
"Fine. Mr Holmes, unless you are a policy-holder at this location, I cannot negotiate the terms of the claim with you. Please return the phone to Ms Patterson." Honestly! Sometimes she felt like she was herding cats with this job!
"You're going to deny her claim anyway, not that you would, but your superiors will cite lack of proper paperwork or something equally dull and you'll just have to apologize to her anyway and you'll probably feel poorly about it. I can help you to skip all that."
Mari's eyebrows hit her hairline, actually feeling herself pause in surprise.
"Sherlock, how do you know that?" demanded the other man's voice.
"This time I'll forgive your usual slowness since there are only auditory clues to go on," he replied smugly. "The woman on the phone is in her thirties, has worked at this same position for most of her career, and is one of the best agents in the call center, all of which you can tell by her voice, her use of proper language, and her calm demeanor in unusual circumstances. But the fact that she requested the copy of an email suggests that she thinks the case is not likely to be approved, since emails do not hold up in the bureaucracy, but she is going to try to argue for it anyway with what little evidence she can gather. Thus, she is sympathetic, but ultimately she has no power to influence the situation."
"All that from listening to one half of the phone conversation?"
"Naturally."
"I don't know who you are," Mari found her voice, taking a deep breath, "but you're probably right. Ms Patterson's insurance is pretty thin anyway, and the repairs she's describing will fall outside her coverage, moreso if she can't hold anyone else responsible. Please hand the phone back – I'd like to tell her I'm sorry."
"Don't be." That voice seemed to dismiss her entirely. "My brother will take care of it."
There was a flurry of movement and the unmistakable sound of typing.
"Wait, you're going to deny my claim?" Ms Patterson asked, obviously in control of the phone again. Her anger was melting away to despair, and Mari's heart constricted. The repairs for this situation would be pricey, and her hands were probably going to be tied by policy. No wonder most people thought insurance agents were jerks.
"Ma'am, I'm going to do everything I can," she promised heartily. "But whoever that is…"
"The guy who blew up my apartment!"
"…is probably right," she continued calmly, ignoring the outburst. "I'll see what I can do, but I don't want to promise anything."
"Don't worry about it," called the now-familiar haughty voice. "Her manager will be getting a call soon."
Before Mari could even quite process this statement, something caught her eye. Across the sea of desks in the busy call center, she could see her manager, a nice if narrow-minded man named Mike, pick up the phone in his glass-walled office. Forgetting that she was on a call herself that was now lapsing into silence (well, except for a continuing conversation on the other end of the line between Ms Patterson, the man who called himself Sherlock Holmes, and the nice guy –had she heard him called John, maybe?) on the line, forgetting that she was supposed to be taking a claim, Mari stared at her boss. Mike's eyes went wide and he spoke roughly into his own phone for a few moments, then hung up. He looked out across the office, meeting her eyes, and after a moment, started to type.
An IM window popped up on Mari's screen.
Whatever the problem is, someone's going to pay for it directly. Blank the claim and purge it.
There was a brief pause, and then:
Also, apparently you're getting a bonus from the government?
Mari set about doing exactly what she'd been told, blanking the claim form and using her special privileges to eliminate the transaction completely. There would be time for questions after the immediate situation was resolved, and having something to do gave her a moment to think.
"Ms Patterson?"
"What?"
"It looks like everything will be taken care of," Mari said, smiling a bit and letting it color her inflection even as she swept through the system to clear the entire record of the claim. "Whoever you have as a tenant is going to pay for everything. There will be no surcharge to your insurance, nor will this be an out-of-pocket expense. I've just confirmed it."
"Really?"
"I told you my brother would take care of it," dismissed the deep voice.
"Who is this brother, anyway?" Mari found herself asking. The phone was passed from what she would have guessed were Ms Patterson's numb fingers, then there was a moment of hesitation, and the third voice took up the call.
"Hi. I'm John Watson. I'm the other bloke that blew up the flat." There was a wry humor in his words that made Mari smile even more.
"Mari McGrady. I guess you don't need me anymore, but I just have to ask. Who are you two that you can do…whatever you just did?" Mari didn't feel too bad deviating from her script for once. After all, nothing else about this call was following proscribed patterns anymore.
"Well, I'm just a doctor from the UK, but Sherlock Holmes knows a lot of people, some of whom seem to have to clean up for him quite a bit," and there was a sharp, teasing air that was not directed at her in his words.
"Really, John!"
"My boss says I'm getting a bonus from the government. Your friend did that? Just because I took the call?"
There was a moment of quiet, before John Watson laughed.
"I'm sorry. My flatmate is an idiot sometimes, but now and again he gets things right. He sent a text to his brother telling him that you were the first competent call center rep he's ever spoken to. I guess his brother did the rest on his own."
Mari couldn't help it. She started to giggle. Maybe it was the nice voice, or the pawky humor, or even just the situation. Two British men blow up the spare bedroom in a Manhattan apartment, and instead of the police being called, she was getting paid extra for not being a moron on the phone to the policy-holder and somebody, "the government" according to Mike, was footing the bill for the damage. She considered asking exactly who this brother was again, but decided it wasn't worth it. She wasn't sure she wanted to know.
"Now, John, you really must focus. The answer is obviously in the consistency of the stain on the left sock found a few metres from the bakery, and I would have identified it by now if not for the unfortunate incident with American chemicals and that beaker resulting in this unnecessary diversion, so I need you to go back through the police statements from the greenhouse workers on the previous morning," the voice of one Sherlock Holmes cut into the quiet.
"Sorry. I've got to go. Socks and greenhouses. You know how it is." Again that smile.
"Of course. I mean, no. This makes no sense, but I'm just going to roll with it," Mari replied as deadpan as she could manage.
"Welcome to my life," John drawled. Another shout of "John!" sounded. Mari wondered vaguely where Ms Patterson was, though she supposed it didn't matter much at this point.
"Well, then, please tell Ms Patterson that it was a pleasure to talk to her this morning and thank her for calling Total Insurance for me."
"I will. Enjoy whatever you're being rewarded with for dealing with us."
As Mari disconnected, she shook her head. Life really was stranger than fiction sometimes, and working as a call-taker, she had plenty of experience with that. Then she snorted and started giggling again. This was definitely a first. She'd handled damaged apartments more times than she could count, as well as poor policies and lack of documentation, and more than once the explanations of that damage had been desperately unlikely or downright inexplicable. But never had she wound up with a bonus from it.
A note slid to her elbow from her left and she turned to where her neighbor was grinning even as he took an incoming call. She picked up the piece of paper and groaned, her head falling into her hands in defeat.
Heard that. We're resetting the counter again. Looks like I won the pool this month! Thanks!
Mari glanced to the other side where her other neighbor was pointedly not looking at her. Between their desks hung a placard and a day-counter, underneath which was a calendar regularly updated with the names of the call center reps and the days they had chosen in the betting pool. The counter had been at 16, but now read 0. And the placard above it:
Days Since Mari Took A Weird One
Yes. There were definitely disadvantages to being the best in the claims department, primarily being Mari's own seemingly infallible knack for getting the "weird ones" with worrying regularity. But as a notification came in from her bank detailing a deposit, and as she stared at the figure that had been added to her funds, she grinned at the odd twist of fate on an otherwise boring Tuesday morning.
"Whoever you are, Sherlock Holmes, thanks for blowing up a bedroom. I hope you got something out of it, too."
Her phone lit up again, and without another thought, Mari turned to it.
"Good morning and thank you for calling Total Insurance. This is the Claims Department, Mari McGrady speaking. How may I help you?"