Die Toten von Salzburg - Mord in bester Lage (2025)

In this case, Irene Russmeyer, her Bavarian colleague Hubert Mur, and Hofrat Alfons Seywald investigate the murder of 23-year-old real estate agent Noelle Imlauer. She had been working for about a year for Francis Zeferer, CEO of FRAZE Holding, and persuaded Mr. Wolfgang to view an apartment. The next morning, he finds the agent shot dead in the empty apartment. From her mother, Yvonne Imlauer, Mur learns that Noelle had started out at the real estate company of Niklas Becherling, a subsidiary of FRAZE. At a real estate regulars’ meeting in his coffee house, Mr. Wolfgang had seen Noelle with someone he did not know. The two had disappeared together into the women’s restroom. According to eyewitness Regis Bianchi, who overheard them, Noelle called the other woman Vanessa. Yvonne Imlauer then tells Mur that Vanessa is Noelle’s former best friend, Vanessa Pöttler. Vanessa had been active in the real estate scene under the false name Daphne Olivia Marx, and is convinced that the fatal accident involving her father Tobias at a FRAZE construction site on Guggenmoosstraße five years earlier, in July 2019, was actually a contract killing. Vanessa had witnessed a fight that preceded the fatal fall. According to Francis Zeferer, the Guggenmoosstraße construction project is a major headache for him because of delivery problems, construction stoppages, and Tobias Pöttler’s accident. His now-deceased father, Franz Zeferer, bought the property from the city in 2016 on the condition that 50 percent of the housing built there would be subsidized rental apartments. Francis’s assistant, Sinah Riesen, gives Russmeyer footage from the security camera on the night of the murder. It shows someone entering the building around the time of the crime and knowing the door code. A vehicle registered to FRAZE can also be seen. The car is identified as Niklas Becherling’s, though he claims he took a wrong turn. According to Becherling, Noelle had begun questioning the company’s business practices. Noelle’s appointment book contains a meeting with her ex-boyfriend at the Franciscan church. Her mother, however, knows nothing about a boyfriend. In fact, Mur and Russmeyer meet Arvid Exenschläger from the Economic and Corruption Prosecutor’s Office at the church. He says Noelle was their key witness and had uncovered fraud between FRAZE Holding and the city involving a rezoning. Francis Zeferer wanted to build only luxury apartments on the Guggenmoosstraße property instead of subsidized housing. In Tobias Pöttler’s locker, Russmeyer finds a false bottom containing notes indicating that foreman Dietmar Galeitner had returned deliveries so that construction would be delayed and the rezoning could go ahead. Galeitner, however, claims he had nothing to do with Tobias’s death. To secure the rezoning, Francis Zeferer gave a villa on the beach in Kefalonia to Oberkofler, a member of the state parliament and head of the Housing Commission. Hofrat Seywald visits former state parliament president Susanne Zirner, Oberkofler’s predecessor, in prison. In exchange for a promise of monthly whiskey deliveries to Zirner, Seywald gets a lead pointing to Francis’s assistant, Sinah Riesen. Russmeyer suspects that Riesen commissioned both murders to protect the company. Since Riesen remains silent out of loyalty to the company and Francis, Russmeyer records a conversation with Francis in which he says Sinah is not part of his family and is “an aging secretary well on her way to dementia, who should have retired long ago.” Only after Russmeyer plays the recording for Riesen does she confess. When Russmeyer cannot reach Vanessa Pöttler by phone, Richard Wagner tracks her mobile phone. Both Vanessa and Francis are at the construction site, where Vanessa is threatening Francis with a gun. After they are told about Sinah Riesen’s confession, Vanessa can be disarmed.