The Zurich Conspiracy

street. She saw a man in a dark green windbreaker get out of the cab. He looked quite familiar, and then she realized where she’d seen him before: on the boat this afternoon, then near the Tinguely machine. Josefa thought it odd but had no time to see where he went. Sali’s parents were surely waiting.
    Back in her apartment, she collapsed on the couch. The outing had exhausted her, but she was unable to nap. Paul’s words were echoing in her ears. So that’s how well he knows Schulmann, huh! Was even on the losing end. How does it all fit together anyway? She was startled by the doorbell.
    “I’ve mislaid that policeman’s phone number,” Esther said breathlessly, “the one who interrogated me about the burglary. I need a document from him for the insurance, and I don’t know the guy’s name. Maybe you know the name of the other guy, he came downstairs with you?”
    “Sebastian Sauter. I was with him at the zoo the other day.”
    Esther’s eyes almost popped out of her head.
    “I finally got his cap back to him.”
    “Did he call you?”
    Josefa thumbed through her address book, ignoring the obvious implication. “Did he get my cell number from you?” she shot back.
    “Possibly. They wanted to know so much after the burglary. They gave me a good grilling. But cops are so darn boring and conservative. They put me to sleep in two minutes.”
    “Maybe,” Josefa muttered, writing the number down on a piece of paper. “But they don’t get excited about anything very easily, my dear, they’ve seen it all. As a woman, you can get mad and lose it and it won’t shock them.”
    Esther took the paper with a wink and rushed upstairs to make the call. Ten minutes later she was at the door once again.
    “That lousy bureaucracy,” she moaned. “It can really get on your nerves. I was bounced around five times until I got the right person! It’s positively a labyrinth.” She sat down on the gymnastics ball Josefa had bought for her back exercises. “And do you know what takes the cake? They say that Sebastian Sauter does not work in their department. He has nothing to do with thefts and burglaries.”
    “Who did you finally get to talk to?”
    “The man who interrogated me last.”
    “And what did he say?”
    “I had the right department, but he was on the case and not Sebastian Sauter . ”
    “And what’s Sauter responsible for? Did you dig that up?”
    Esther hopped up and down on the ball. “Yes. Capital offenses, I believe.”
    “Capital offenses? What’s that?”
    “Murder. What else?”

It flashed through Josefa’s mind on the streetcar that she’d left the champagne truffles from Confiserie Sprüngli in the fridge. Her visit to her father’s would begin with an apology right off the bat. Fortunately she had her brother’s birthday present with her. She missed her stop, though, and had to walk all the way back from Klusplatz. Maybe it was her unconscious wish to sidestep the family gathering.
    Her father’s house actually belonged to her stepmother, Verena, who brought it into the family when they married. Josefa, just sixteen at the time, suffered a double shock: a new woman by her father’s side and a new home. The house was in fact a cozy old villa with many nooks and stairways, fruit trees in the garden, and an old stone well in front of the wrought-iron gate. But her stepmother’s industriousness and pep were a constant aggravation. Josefa did not rebel openly, as Markus did when he turned twenty; she just snapped shut like an oyster. Whenever her father urged her to be a bit more responsive toward his new wife, Josefa would give him the silent treatment, sending him into a white-hot rage every time. Professor Rehmer might come up with the most complicated linguistic and philosophical theories, but he was buffaloed by his daughter.
    Josefa promised herself she’d be nice to him tonight, for her brother’s sake.
    Verena was the one who answered the door when she knocked. Her short, dyed, honey-blonde hair was combed back with hair gel, which accentuated her pretty, symmetrical face. She’d turned fifty recently, but Josefa’s father was going on sixty-five.
    “So nice to see you again,” Verena said. Was that supposed to be a veiled criticism? Josefa asked herself. She hadn’t paid Verena and her father a visit for a year at least. Last Christmas she’d fled to Egypt instead.
    “I bought some champagne truffles and forgot them in the fridge, sorry,” she said,