The Zurich Conspiracy

ones are worth twenty thousand dollars.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “I had them appraised, of course. If the earrings were junk, I wouldn’t have given them to you. I’d have thrown them away. My revenge would have been perfect only if Pius would have seen that I’d rejected his twenty-thousand-dollar gift, with no regrets. Do you understand?”
    No , Josefa thought, not really . Why did Pius give Joan a gift worth twenty thousand dollars? Why didn’t he bankroll his photography book with it? Or did he want to curry favor with Joan? Did he hope she’d help him in his career? Or that she’d let herself be photographed in the nude like Pamela?
    “I sincerely hope you’re not mad at me, Josephine.”
    “I appreciate your frankness, Joan,” Josefa replied in her benumbed state, “and many thanks for the present.”
    “Lots of luck, Josephine, and all the best.”
    Helene was observing her with curiosity the whole time. “So who was that?”
    “If I tell you, can I ask you a question?” Josefa responded.
    Helene nodded.
    “Joan Caroll has given me a twenty-thousand-dollar present,” Josefa said, and then without a pause, “What’s the story with Claire?”

The corpse made for a horrible picture. Blood was seeping onto the rough wooden floor. Given the choice, Claire would have loved to show Thüring to the public in this state—in his long johns. The erection he’d gotten while planning to rape her would have made him look even better. That was probably his routine at Swixan, banging female employees and then dumping them.
    How did Thüring find out she was here? He must have followed her. He knew she had tampered with the Porsche’s brakes. He knew a lot of details—but where did he get them? Only from Westek? Or did he have an accomplice, somebody who might have tailed her in Düsseldorf? Maybe he didn’t have her shadowed but Westek instead. Maybe he didn’t trust Westek as far as he could throw him. She’d never find out the truth. But one thing was certain: He wanted to get his revenge on her, wanted to find out how much she knew about everything and who else might know. That’s why he tracked her down.
    Why hadn’t she detected anything suspicious? Maybe he was simply following in her tracks at a safe distance. That wasn’t hard to do in the new snow that fell the night before.
    She had to bury the body, but the ground was hard as a rock. And she couldn’t imagine doing it with her burned hands. It was better to drop the body into the lake, and Thüring’s car along with it. She felt around in her pockets and took out the key. Then she paused. What if she couldn’t break through the ice on the lake? Or the ice gave way under the car’s weight before she found a good spot?
    Wouldn’t it be better to take off and leave the corpse here? Nobody could prove she was the murderer.
    She looked around. She’d have to make her workshop disappear. Too bad. But what if they’d think that it was Thüring ’s hideout? That he had tinkered with Westek’s Porsche? But her footprints were in the snow. And her fingerprints all over the chalet. She’d have to deal with that later. She’d find a solution to everything. One thing was for sure: There were no witnesses to the murder. Nothing was over yet.
    First she’d have to take care of his car. She put on her jacket and her boots. Then she eased her gloves over her reddened skin.
    The crackling and crunching of snow underfoot was the only sound breaking the silence of the valley. Good that she was so far from civilization. After a quarter of an hour’s march she saw the glint of her car in the woods. But Thüring’s car was nowhere to be seen. She walked back along the road through the forest, up to the curve and then spotted it, a white SUV.
    She opened the passenger door and went through the glove compartment. All she found was the registration—under a fictitious name. She looked under the seats. Nothing. A flashlight, tissues, and a road map lay on the rear seats.
    She walked around the car, opened the tailgate, and found a black suitcase. She searched through Thüring’s key ring until she found a little key. It fit. She rifled through clothing and other personal belongings until her hand hit a hard surface. She unearthed a file folder, made herself comfortable on the driver’s seat, and started the motor to warm the car up.
    The documents were in English. Her gloves made paging through them difficult, but she quickly realized