CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
8:05 am, Friday June 30th
City Morgue
Julia thumped the telephone away, marginally annoyed Detective Murdoch assumed she was at her desk before eight and had her brains working before her first cup of caffeine. Coffee now made, she sipped the brew while Jack worked on cleaning the cooler floor and shelving. No new corpses came in overnight, so she used the opportunity to read the papers, starting with Ruby's story. There it was, the name Ruby Ogden in print on the first page -- albeit below the fold -- but front page nonetheless.
Grandmama is rolling over in her grave, since a lady only appears in the papers at her birth, marriage and her death. Julia smiled. Well -- Ruby is no lady...and neither am I for that matter.
The headline and article itself was less amusing. 'Lazy or Indifferent?' depicted a timeline of the Toronto-area bootleg booze deaths since June 22nd and emphasized the lack of any arrests in the eight days since, alleging the reason for this disgrace was the poverty of the victims.
Julia nearly tore the pages in half. God! Had it been only eight days? Her gasp of displeasure was loud enough to call Jack from the cooler, asking what was wrong.
"Nothing, Jack. Sorry!" She scanned the rest of the headlines -- even more lurid -- and turned to the back page for the personals: "Seeking information in St. Catharines on Miss Olive Routledge. Legacy involved," followed by a box number. Julia thought dangling the prospect of money was a nice touch. She hoped for results starting today.
Her first task this morning was going to be locating Olive's children. She glanced at the clock, deciding if she was up so should the Children's Aid Society, and grabbed the telephone. "Operator? Please get me long distance. St. Catharines. Yes. The Children's Aid Society please."
She waited impatiently until a woman's nasal-pitched voice came on the other end, introducing herself as Mrs. Ashworth. Julia explained what she wanted.
"I am sorry Miss Ogden--"
"Doctor Ogden, the Toronto City Coroner," Julia corrected.
"Yes, well...this is quite irregular. Our organization does not physically hold the children, only rescues them from unhealthy or unsafe situations. Some are abandoned, some are half-orphans, where one parent has died. Some have lost all family. Some are removed from unsuitable parents. The two children you are asking about went to a receiving home. From there they will be placed in an orphanage."
Julia copied down the name of the receiving home. "Just how many orphanages are there?"
YOU ARE READING
Reach of Destiny
FanficA politician, a reporter and a coroner all walk into a bar and witness an awful death... In Roaring Twenties Toronto, prohibition is in full swing but someone has taken to poisoning bootleg booze. The new Mayor's friend is dead in a posh speake...
