‘Turn that damned music off!’
‘It was playing on a loop on the blue-tooth speaker when we got here, sir,’ said the young constable on duty by the door. ‘We thought it might be important.’
‘What is it, then?’
Stepping back from the body he had been examining on the floor, an older officer piped up. ‘It’s that song from South Pacific, “This nearly was mine”.’
’Never heard of it, Judd.’
‘Before your time, Chief Gruber. Glad you’re here, though. Figured they might bring you in on this one, being as who it is. ‘
‘Yeh. Hard to get your head around it. Harrison. Dead. Ready to tell me how he died?’
‘Blunt force trauma to the back of the head. No immediate sign of the weapon.’
Turning to the young woman who had come to stand beside him, Gruber asked.
‘Detective Moran. Any sign of robbery? Break and enter?’
‘No sign of either yet, sir.’
Gruber walked slowly around the room, taking in every detail.
‘Hell, Judd. Look at all these awards. I’d forgotten he got so many Oscars.’
‘One of my favorite actors, Chief. He’ll be sorely missed in this town.’
‘OK team. I’ll leave you to it. Meeting with full reports in hand, in my office first thing in the morning. The pressure will be on to solve this one quickly. Not often a Hollywood star is brutally murdered in his own home’.
As he left the house, Gruber’s phone rang.
‘You’re fucking kidding me! Where? …When?… OK… I’m on my way’.
Storming back inside, he bellowed. ‘Moran. Come with me now. Judd, as soon as you finish here, I need you. There’s been another murder, not far from here.’
Arriving at the scene of the second murder, Gruber saw that there were just two young patrolmen there, looking in shock at the body that lay on the floor, blood coagulated in a large halo around his head.
‘Hope you haven’t touched anything, boys?’
‘No sir. But sir, you know who that is?’
‘Of course, I know who it is. Now step outside and wait for the forensic team to arrive. Moran come look at this.’
Moran trod carefully around the body, leaning in to look at the head wound.
‘Looks like another head bashing job. Interesting that he has been killed in the room where he keeps all his trophies too. See, three Oscars here. Hang on though, one of them looks a bit off.’
Gruber put on his gloves and reached to pick up the golden statuette.
‘Moran, check this out. Looks like a speck of blood to me. Could this be the murder weapon?’
Handing the award to the Detective, he scrolled his cell phone for a number and dialed.
‘Judd. You on your way? Okay, well check out all those Oscars on the shelf before you leave. One of them may have been the murder weapon. Tag them all for evidence please and hurry here. We have a double murder on our hands.’
Moran butted in, ‘Chief, look here, he seems to be holding a note.’
Already gloved up, Gruber uncurled the dead man’s fingers and extracted a neatly folded piece of paper.
“Minus 6. The stars are aligned. All is well.”
‘What the hell does that mean?’
***
At the morning briefing, Judd confirmed that both actors had been killed by a blow to the back of the head with an Oscar. Combined with the cryptic note, and the tune on a loop at Harrison’s house, it seemed likely that the murders were committed out of professional jealousy. But why leave a note?
Gruber answered that query, ’Sometimes these perps want us to catch them. They murder as a final act, a last bid for fame, and they challenge us to work out who they are.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that, Chief. Can we maybe consider who was nominated but passed up for Oscars when our victims won? We think that the vics knew their killer because there was no sign of forced entry, and both were killed in their dens where they probably wouldn’t take strangers.’
‘Good idea, Moran. Get on it immediately.’
As soon as the list arrived, Moran studied it carefully, eliminating who she could, ending up with only five names. On a hunch, after work she headed to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Ducking and weaving amongst all the tourists, she found Harrison’s star and a couple of yards away, Kevin’s. And then she saw it. If you drew an imaginary line from Harrison to Kevin, there in the middle was a star with a name matching one on her list.
She pulled out her cell phone.
‘I think I’ve got him, sir. Right here in the stars in the footpath.’
© Tropical Writers Inc 2025