“What’s up?” Kate Swift rasped.
“Your voice sounds terrible,” Laura said. “Are you sure you only have allergies? You sound like you might have bronchitis.”
Laura heard muffled laughing in the background.
“Or maybe you are having too much fun?” Laura heard Kate chuckle.
“Sergeant O’Malley is here. I’m going to put you on speakerphone. We want to tell you what we learned from the FBI.”
“They’re cooperating?”
“I know, big surprise. But, for whatever reason, they are cooperating.”
“What did they say?”
“The San Francisco office has been investigating Malcolm Eastwick for involvement in money laundering.”
“I thought it was something like that,” Kate said. “Where’s the money come from?”
“They think Eastwick was getting money from the Russian Mafia and washing it through Satori subsidiaries.”
They heard a muffled conversation.
Laura spoke. “Tom says that Satori has been holding workshops with Russian ‘intellectuals.’ That’s probably the basis for the contact with the Mafia.”
“That makes sense,” Sanchez said. “Anyway, the FBI thinks that the cash in the safe wasn’t being skimmed by Eastwick; it was merely the latest installment in a long-standing relationship.”
“So, Eastwick was getting paid as part of the ‘investment stream’ from the Satori licenses?”
“That’s what the FBI thinks.”
“How did the FBI find out about this?” Kate asked.
“That’s why we called you. They got an anonymous phone tip.”
“How does that help?”
“The caller was a woman, and the call was made from a cellphone in your area.”
“There’s no cell tower here,” Kate said.
“We know,” Sanchez said. “The FBI used their technology to trace the call to a router on the Satori campus.”
“So, the informant was a woman calling from here,” Kate said.
“Exactly. Another reason for you to be very careful.”