The Zurich Conspiracy

Josefa spoke up one more time, keeping her eyes lowered as she talked. “There is something else. As a kid…As a teenager I had a lot of questions, and very few were ever answered. You know that there were many things that weren’t discussed. Now…now I’ve started to look for the answers. I know…that is, I am convinced I can find them if I’m persistent enough.” She took a deep breath. “I want to know what’s behind certain things. What’s going on behind the scenes. I don’t want to be excluded anymore, do you understand? I want to know what’s happened. What my part is in the whole picture…What role I’m going to be assigned.” She raised her head and looked out the window. “So what I want to know is…why did my mother say in the hospital, ‘Josefa belongs to me’? And why did you say, ‘She belongs to both of us’?”
    Now she looked at her father, who gingerly lowered himself back into his chair. He rubbed his eyes for a long time and with some effort, as if that could somehow blot out the sight of his rebellious daughter.
    “She was confused,” he said at last, in a halting voice. “The medications confused her. She was dying. She didn’t know what she was saying anymore.”
    Josefa waited. But her father didn’t have anything to add.
    “I want to know,” she insisted doggedly. “There are still a lot of things I don’t know. I’ve a right to know them. I was there, wasn’t I? It concerns me too. It’s…it’s not only about your life, it’s about mine too. I’m not going to let go, Papa.”
    She turned to the door and looked back at her father. He sat there with shoulders drooping, his head lowered. She waved the papers in her hand. “Thanks.”
    “Have Verena get you a coffee,” she heard him say. She was dismissed.
    Josefa found her stepmother upstairs, sorting out her spring wardrobe. A half-filled clothes bag for charity lay on her dressing room carpet.
    “Anita is a very private person, you know,” Verena said right away. “And now media gossip is spreading everything about. It’s not a simple matter. But I think Werner was not a simple person.” She straightened out the collar of a lilac-colored blouse lying on her lap. “I met him once briefly.”
    “You met him?” Josefa asked in astonishment.
    “Yes, I visited his father in the hospital. He was in the clinic where I was working at the time. And Werner Schulmann was visiting him at that very moment. He thought I was a nurse and treated me accordingly.”
    “What do you mean, accordingly?”
    “Haughtily and arrogantly, I can’t describe it any other way. Until his father cleared up the mistake. Then he took his leave very quickly.” Verena removed her slippers and began to rub her feet together. “Werner made life difficult for Anita. He wanted to prevent his father from changing his will in her favor. He threatened her with lawyers, imagine that! He called her a gold digger, although she was married to Armin for eight years and besides that gave up her job in order to take care of him. Oh, do let’s have another coffee.”
    She got up and looked at Josefa expectantly. She knew this piece of news had her stepdaughter on the hook.
    “Tea, please.”
    They went down to the kitchen and Verena put the kettle on. “Werner did in fact threaten Anita with a lawyer,” she repeated. “His lawyer didn’t want to hand over Werner’s documents and tapes at first.”
    “Tapes?” Josefa repeated, her ears pricking up.
    “Yes, surely you know about the tapes from the golf tournament. Werner gave them to his lawyer for safekeeping. But you can’t fool around with the police like that. The lawyer ultimately had to hand them over.” They sat down in the little parlor with their teacups.
    “So Schulmann deposited the tapes in his lawyer’s safe. I thought he kept them at home,” Josefa said, surprised.
    Verena nodded energetically. “The police got the tapes from the lawyer. Mind you, it’s likely that Werner had copies at home—but they’ve vanished. That’s what Anita told me.”
    “Copies? There were copies of the tapes? And how does Frau Schulmann know that?” Josefa struggled to hide her impatience.
    “Very simple. Werner told his lawyer that he’d copied everything he’d given him to deposit safely.” Verena looked at her stepdaughter; she could very well figure out what thoughts were going through her head. “From everything Anita told me, I have come to the conclusion that the