The challenge: write a short story in 20 minutes using the following:

Characters: Heroic dog, Oscar-winning actor

Genre: True Crime

Setting: The set of the movie Titanic

Trope: Body double

POV/tense: Writer’s choice

And the result:

On a sunny Tuesday morning, Hollywood legend Kathy Bates was found bludgeoned to death underneath the Kraft services table on the set of the movie Titanic. The murder weapon, the oscar she won for her role in the movie Misery, lay at her feet. The head of that golden statuette was dented, and stuck to it was a piece of her bloody scalp.

James Cameron, the embattled director, was ruled out as a suspect. Not immediately, at first. The detectives spent five hours interviewing him in one of the steerage cabins. He cried, literal tears running down his face. Sobbing, in fact. At that moment, Titanic wasn’t the worldwide smash it’s remembered as. Rather it was steering course toward flopland, over budget, over schedule. The hollywood press got a perverse glee in reporting every setback. And the murder of the beloved actress was considered the ultimate iceberg that would sink Titanic forever.

The set closed for two weeks. Leonardo DiCaprio, not yet the A-lister he is now, spent those days holed up in a West Hollywood dive downing pint after pint of Guinness, alone, or with some male friends. Rumors spread that it was he who might have bashed Kathy’s skull with mister gold, seeing as he lost his sole nomination. But when one of the detectives arm wrestled DiCaprio, he was quickly stricken from the suspect list.

Next up was Kate Winslet. She took her hiatus in stride, spending her mornings by the pool of her Hollywood Hills hacienda drinking martinis with her corgi on her lap. The dectives interviewturned up nothing susplcious. She merely claimed howmmuch she absolutely adored Bates, and how she could never imagine harming such a glorious thespian. Winslet was stricken from the list, primarily because of her refined British accent.

Weeks turned into months. Cameron begged the LAPD to let him restart shooting—they’d recast her role with Dolly Parton—but it was a no. The culprit had to be found. Justice demanded it.

At a complete loss, the LAPD brought their finest detective to the set. Her name was Wilma, a one hundred and nineteen pound German Shepherd, who’d proven herself in a strinng of drug busts. If anyone could crack the case it would be her.

The detectives brought her to the set and set her free of her leash. Wilma roamed the floors of the ship. Believe it or not, Cameron had actually built an almost life-size replica of the Titanic. Wilma padded and sniffed but nothing.

Then they brought her to the stars trailers. First, DiCaprio’s, where Wilma showed little interest. Then Winslet’s, then all the other minor stars, none of their names remembered.

Hope was nearly lost. The case would never be solved. Cameron’s career would be ruined. Just as the dectives were about to leash up Wilma and load her in the back of the cruiser her ears perked up. She raced off to one of the minor trailers and padded at the door. Inside, she streaked toward the rear and pawed at a black briefcase buried beneath a pile of vintage dresses.

The detectives opened it. Inside were photos of Kathy Bates, all of them with her head cut off, or her body mangled. They even found a voodoo doll with pins sticking in it. The detectives noticed a nametag on the briefcase. It belonged to one Betty-Ann Carmichael: Kathy Bates’ body double.

Carmichael had been a struggling actor for decades. This had been her biggest role since a doublemint gum commercial in 1987.

She confessed to the murder two days later. And that solved the mystery of the most shocking crime in Hollywood since the murder of Sharon Tate.