Cyber Snoop Nation: The Adventures of Littanie Webster, Sixteen-Year-Old Genius Private Eye
On Internet Radio

Teenge Sleuths

Cyber Snoop Nation

The Adventures Of Littanie Webster,

Sixteen-Year-Old Genius Private Eye

On Internet Radio

Teenage Female Sleuth on Internet Audio

Anne Hart

Mystery and Suspense Press

San Jose New York Lincoln Shanghai

Cyber Snoop Nation

The Adventures Of Littanie Webster, Sixteen-Year-Old Genius Private

Eye

On Internet Radio

All Rights Reserved © 2002 by Anne Hart

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

Mystery and Suspense Press

an imprint of iUniverse, Inc.

For information address:

iUniverse, Inc.

5220 S. 16th St., Suite 200

Lincoln, NE 68512

www.iuniverse.com

Any resemblance to actual people and events is purely coincidental.

This is a work of fiction.

ISBN: 0-595-22033-9

ISBN: 978-1-5320-0057-7

Contents

Introduction

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

About the Author

To all those Teenage Sleuths on Internet Digital Radio and Streaming Video

Introduction

Her name is Littanie Webster, teenage Cybersnoop and private eye apprentice, stuck at age sixteen on the Wide World Web. Welcome to Littanie’s series of private eye, teenage female sleuth adventures about life in Cybersnoop Nation.

ONE

12:00 A.M. SATURDAY NIGHT

Forensic sixteen-year-old Cybersnoop, Littanie Webster, color coordinated down to her underwear in denim and a Greek fisherman’s cap, sat with her legs folded under her in the cage. Welcome to Cyber Snoop Nation, she specified.

It was eighty degrees inside the recording booth and humid. On the advice of her lawyer, she decided on a guest for the evening at the last possible minute-Gene Wright.

He wheeled his desk chair in a semi-circle and clicked a ball point pen nervously until she extended her hand and steadied him. Her voice was courteous, but patronizing. We’re on the air in five seconds-no background noise, please! He braced his chair against her desk.

She pinched the pen out of his fingers and tossed it into a cup filled with pencils. He grabbed it from the cup, spilling the contents over with a crashing sound.

Klutz! She screamed in a whisper. You’d make a fortune in comedy reviving the Three Stooges.

Sorry, it’s my gold award pen. a caller, Gene Wright looked up at her with the child in himself giving her the pout of a newborn lamb.

The red lights blinked On Air, and her silver gaze of false innocence imploded into a critical squint. We have a surprise guest tonight, folks, she murmured mysteriously. The words tingled strangely on her tongue.

Gene nursed the microphone as if it were too precious to defile. Why would someone offer a foreign guy two million to murder you? He smiled at Littanie seated next to him as his fingers lightly brushed her thigh.

She swiveled quickly, turning her back. As Gene rested one hand on her shoulder, she grabbed her corded microphone off the desk. He watched her walk to the glass wall that separated her from the engineer’s office.

She took a deep breath. I need my personal space. If someone wants my job that much, why didn’t he just call my manager? Littanie wedged herself into the corner.

He leaned forward in his chair and spoke in a controlled voice. Why’d you hire me all of a sudden as your private eye?

Oh, not me...My station manager hired you because at sixteen and without your private investigator license yet, you work cheap. I’ll have to call you the researcher instead of the investigator.

Do you believe in equal pay for equal worth?

Now don’t make me feel off-centered. That’s the first sign a wife notices when she knows her husband doesn’t love her anymore.

She took a deep, unsteady breath. Folks, I notice that my mystery guest, private eye, Gene Wright, is suspiciously fondling his microphone. Tell me, Mr. Wright, does nervously rubbing that microphone quench some deep thirst within you to solve crimes?

Not really, Gene said calmly. I still believe the average person should get involved when he witnesses a suspicious conversation.

So, it looks like Mr. Wright is Mister Right, after all, she laughed. Some cheap mouth-breathing, nose-picking jerk is always stalking me, fantasizing he’s in love with Littanie. Which one of you out there is the real jerk? Pick up that phone. I have an open line now.

Not one phone line on the board lit up. Gene watched her pacing, leaning against the walls of her cage, sipping a cup of caffeine-free barley tea.

How can you stand it? He asked on the air. Wouldn’t you rather be working outdoors in the sunshine?

She took his question as a cue to perform. It satisfies my impact hunger. We’re all caged in this recording booth-in one way or another, she snapped. It’s universal. Everybody craves new chances. As long as we’re stuck on this crowded, noisy planet, all we can do is grow.

Gene inclined his head of thick, dark brown curly hair. In a way, his profile reminded her of an ancient Aegean statue.

Doctor, if you don’t belong to one man, I guess you belong to them all.

They broke for a commercial. Littanie burst in on her producer.

Jim will pay you the current rate for a P.I. with no previous experience and superior electronic skills.

That don’t sound fair enough. What about life experience?

She rushed back to the cage and finished the segment. Later, she took Gene aside into an office.

I feel guilty knowing I should hire you myself, she said with easy defiance. We know this is your first case. Just look at it as an internship to get some experience.

I’m not some college student in his twenties.

I thought you want the chance to save your favorite celebrity.

You’re no celebrity. Get some reality here, Gene pierced her complacency. You’re a broadcast teenage cybersnoop trying to play at practicing psychology without a license.

Gene grabbed her and kissed her hand delicately as he would a toddler. She resisted at first, then squeezed his chest. Jim looked up in surprise through the glass booth wall. A moment later Jim ran in and pulled his gun on both of them. He pressed the cold steel barrel against Gene’s cheek.

You know what they do to separate two dogs in heat, Jim said firmly.

Gene gave Jim’s .38 a raw and primitive look. Bang! You’re dead. It could happen just like that. So you need more than phone company electronics.

Put the gun away. This is a radio station, a place of free speech, idiot! Littanie reprimanded her producer with all the challenge and argument of a trial attorney with Gene as her jury. You are convincing Gene smiled. He wondered how she could love the fire and verve of a good argument and draw more energy from it without tiring.

You’re too beautiful for radio. When will you sell out to T.V. for the big money that comes with loss of privacy?

When they stop saying to almost every woman over thirty-five, ‘You’re too old. You’re too ugly, and you don’t defer to men.’

She became a subtle, electric fire that drew power by stoking the angry, red coals in all men, Gene thought. That’s what I love about you, he said. It’s seeing how you grow.

Littanie’s eyes widened in surprise as she stared at Gene, but he was sure of himself. Oh, strictly as a fan, of course, he added.

Jim grabbed Gene’s wrist and forcefully tried to lead him to the door. Littanie jumped between the two men, trying to pull them apart. Jim’s iron grip tightened on Gene’s arm.

That’s not your job, Jim. If you see me in trouble with a guest, you call the security guard. Littanie hid her trembling hands behind her back.

Jim’s voice rang with command. Maybe you’d like to run this station like a Field Marshal, since you enjoy giving orders so much. His brows flickered.

Is that a promotion? I’d certainly run it more efficiently.

Gene pulled out of Jim’s grasp. Don’t worry, Doctor Whisper. I’m sure your producer worries that your insurance won’t cover this incident.

Jim nodded with a taut jerk of his neck. You’re weirder than I thought, Mr. Wright.

Maybe I’ll see you in court, Gene replied sharply as Jim pivoted like a soldier and ignored him.

The traffic break’s ending in fifteen seconds. Jim hurried back to his office.

Littanie hid her feelings from Jim, but not from Gene. He steadied her trembling hand between his large hands, then placed his card on her desk. Lady, I’m more vulnerable than you are. He squinted at Jim. That man shouldn’t control so much of your life.

Gene turned and walked away, an island of slow, precise movement amid her confusion. He pulled the clip out of his gun and tossed it to her. Littanie caught it. Her voice was seductive, and the reply was obvious as she watched Gene flinch. He slammed the studio door on his way out.

The only protection I need is a trust fund, she said. He came back inside the office and stood face to face with her. Gene’s smile was wide with deep dimples in his cheeks and chin.

O.K., have it your way, doctor, he sighed. She slipped the gun into his new private eye shoulder holster under his windbreaker.

I hope you have a license to kill, she added. Gene left without answering.

After station break, Littanie avoided looking into Jim’s eyes as she hurried past him. He grabbed her wrists gently.

You’re not going on until the bomb squad opens that crate, Jim said.

Don’t be ridiculous, she barked. That crate’s no bomb.

How do you know? Jim shouted, pointing to the big crate in the corner of his office.

She pulled out of his grasp ruffled and anxiously entered her booth, switching on the microphone. The phone lines were flashing.

The station engineer gave her the signal and count-down from behind the glass wall. Litannie’s hands trembled, but her voice was cold and exact.

Glad you could hold on through the traffic break, Inez. You’re boring, and if I were living with you, I’d push you around also, you coward!

Inez screeched. Obnoxious bitch! I’ve got three toddlers under five.

There was a smile in Litannie’s voice. Self-concept is destiny. Face it. Your real father wanted a boy.

He was afraid of the feminine part of himself. And now you have to deal with that dirty old god inside you. He wants to have a cock fight with any guy who comes along.

Music welled up-the station’s theme song for her show. She poured herself a cup of the world’s most expensive coffee-from the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. Littanie had her secretary grind the coffee beans just before her guest arrived.

She ordered Evian mineral water to brew the coffee with in the glass electric pot on her desk. When she stirred in a spoon of sugar, it just wasn’t a cheap stainless steel studio cafeteria spoon.

Littanie always used Chinese porcelain because she couldn’t stand the taste of metal utensils. She insisted on buying Peluge brand sugar from France in a gourmet shop in Beverly Hills.

Just before she set the coffee before her guest, she sprinkled it with tiny edible gold flakes-24 karat pure. Gene left his cup standing, and now there was a fly floating on the top of the world’s most expensive.

Littanie savored the aroma of deep sweetness as she poured fresh coffee into a Royal Minton cup from England. It was gold-plated, except the lip and inside. The dark coffee filled the cup of the finest white bone china. She sniffed and compared it to the cheap poster print of a Dali painting on the wall.

She didn’t quite have time to take a first sip of the coffee. The music ended, and Jim held up a sign to the glass wall. It read: BIG PACKAGE CAME FOR YOU.

Jim waved to Littanie from outside the booth. He pointed to the gift-wrapped crate. Jim wheeled it in front of her from behind the glass wall. He waved the crate slightly to see whether anything inside jiggled. It was about six feet high and three feet wide.

Littanie shrugged her shoulders and signaled back with a raised finger to wait until the next break. Jim shook his head and fist at her with confusion. She spoke to him through her microphone.

It looks like a refigerator-or a coffin.

His motions became angrier. The clerical employees gathered around him outside her booth and stared back at Litannie. She looked back at him with the same angry gaze. Finally, Jim put his ear to the silent box.

During another station break Littanie ran wildly through the corridors of the radio station to Jim’s office. She madly tore off the wrapping paper. It read Happy Birthday. Jim and her secretary helped pry open the pinewood crate. Inside was a mahagony-colored coffin.

Look out! Jim shoved her and the secretary under a desk. There way be an explosive device inside.

So I’m a better superman than you, Littanie laughed as she stood up and ripped at it. She pried open the coffin with the fire place polker in Jim’s office. He had wheeled it on a dolly from the engineer’s room to his own office.

At least the audio room will be safe. Jim ground the words out.

Inside the coffin was a note tied to a live black rat running a treadmill. The rat’s screen cage rested on a note tied to a copy of her book.

Littanie tore the note out of Jim’s hands and read it aloud. You belong in the sewer. With a sigh, Littanie banged the lid shut and punched at the air. That poor animal could have died in that crate.

She pursed her lips at the rat, nuzzling the cage and blowing a kiss. It’s alive. Look at those large, pitiful eyes.

Get that filthy rat out of here. Jim groaned as the secretary left the room shaking her head in half relief and half disgust.

If you inhale dust or mold from its droppings, you’ll get pneumonia or some other horrible virus.

Not until you call Wildlife and ask them where can I donate an itsy bitsy big black rat in a cage?

Oh, I’d volunteer to take it, Jim sneered. Unfortunately, my cat would die trying to vomit after wolfing down that sewage. Littanie looked askance at him as she swept the small rat’s cage into her own office and placed it on a table near a window.

TWO

12:OO P.M.

At radio station K.W.I.N. in West Hollywood, station manager, Jim McCormick gazed into