Ladies in Red – Director: Ruba Nedda/Writer: Cal Coons
This one starts with Frankie, Trudy, and Flo investigating a very important case … trying to figure out whose dog has been sneaking in to hump a prize Great Dane. Frankie notices a guy with a gun in the house across the street, so she and Trudy (who are both apparently familiar with guns) arm themselves and go to check it out. They find a man and his maid tied up and surprise the gunmen, who start shooting and take off. The gunmen have a car waiting in the alley and get away, despite Frankie and Trudy trading shots with them.
The victim (Simon Conroyd) runs an airplane factory and is sure that Communist agitators at the factory are the ones who broke in and tied him up. He tells Frankie he’s had trouble with labour unrest at the factory and
offers to hire her to root out the ringleaders, pointing out that she and Trudy can blend in better with the workers. At Frankie’s office, she and Trudy seem to sympathize more with the workers wanting fair treatment than with the factory owner who refuses to give it to them, but they agree that armed people breaking into someone’s house is going too far. Frankie talks to the factory manager (Richard Scanlon, played by Paul Amos of Lost Girl and Murdoch Mysteries fame), who’s also certain that Communists are behind the attack on his boss. Trudy gets a job at the factory so she can mingle with the workers and 
ask questions. Frankie talks to the maid (Fern Higgins) and Conroyd’s son to get details on the attack. Conroyd’s son tells her that his father has a mistress, his mother’s a drunk, and his father probably has numerous business enemies … so, a typical rich guy. At the factory, Trudy meets a worker (Zelda) who tells her she’s heard rumours about Communists working at the factory. Naturally, Zelda would never associate with such people, but she seems a bit nervous when talking about them, so I assume she’ll turn out to be a Commie herself. At the office, Flo comes by to give Frankie some dirt on the Conroyd’s that she
learned from a guy who works in the neighbourhood. Turns out the invaders were casing the place ahead of time, but Frankie wonders why they parked in the alley but went around and entered the house through a side door. Frankie gets a call to meet her at the back of the factory. When she arrives, a stray horse trots past and while she’s wondering were it came from, she’s knocked out by an explosion.
Frankie’s fine, but the cops assume the blast was more agitators striking against the factory, not someone trying to take her out. Trudy mentions 
meeting Zelda and says she’ll try to get more info from her. As Trudy’s leaving, her mom shows up to let her know her dad lost his job. Trudy says she can give them some of her savings to help out until he finds work again. At the factory, we see Scanlon talking to Conroyd, going on about how the Commies are responsible for the explosion and have to be stopped. Mary gives Frankie some info on the explosion, pointing out that it’s almost an exact duplicate of the Wall Street attack in 1920 … except that time, the horse didn’t get loose and run off (which probably saved Frankie’s life). Mary also tells her a body was found in the wreckage, that of the factory’s bookkeeper, Henry Logan. Frankie wonders if Logan was going to name some of the agitators and they killed him, or if he was a Communist himself and was killed for betraying the cause. Frankie finds a weird-looking horseshoe in the rubble and asks Mary to track down the horse, even though Mary’s not really a horse person.
Trudy’s brother stops by the factory to let her know the family situation is worse than their mom let on. Trudy wants to get more info from Zelda, so she suggests they go out on the town. Zelda’s a bit reluctant to go out carousing (being a “proper” gal), but agrees. Mary finds the blacksmith who made the weird horseshoe and convinces him (with a subtle threat) to tell her which horse it was for. It turns out to belong to a milkman who’s such a drunk that the horse just stops automatically at all the delivery locations and the people take their milk and leave the money. At a Chinese restaurant, Zelda admits to Trudy that Scanlon asked her to nose around and root out any Communists at the factory, but she says she hasn’t actually found any. Trudy asks if she knows any workers who might be agitators and Zelda agrees to introduce her to some. Flo asks Frankie to come to the morgue, where she shows her that Logan had been stabbed to death before the explosion, and long enough before that there were maggots in the wound. So, he obviously wasn’t the one who called Frankie.
Mary talks to Wilkins, who admits his horse disappeared for a while (when he was passed out drunk), but later came home on its own. He says the horse has a great sense of direction and never forgets a place where he’s given a treat, which gives Mary an idea. Zelda takes Trudy to a meeting of the “agitators”, who are actually just a women’s church group who want better working conditions. Trudy tells Frankie about them and points out 
that an accountant being killed could mean fraud. Frankie wonders if the home invasion might’ve been a set-up to pin everything on the Communist bogeyman. Mary takes the horse on the milk run, letting it make all the stops to see if it goes anywhere off the route. Frankie tells Conroyd that Communists probably aren’t responsible for the attack at his house, but he has trouble believing her. Trudy tells Zelda the truth about being a detective and Zelda admits that she was banging Scanlon, who promised he was going to leave his wife for her. That’s why she was acting as his spy at the factory, but of course he was full of shit. The horse takes Mary to a barn off the usual route, where she finds blood on the floor.
Mary calls Frankie and they realize that Logan must’ve been stabbed there and put into the wagon with the explosives to make it look like the Wall Street bombing. The killers borrowed the milkman’s horse, knowing he’d be too drunk to figure out what happened, but the horse led Mary back there
because he never forgets a place where he’s given a treat. Frankie finds the same rope that was used to tie up the Conroyds and Mary tells her the place was owned by a guy named Wilbur Higgins, who died over a year ago. Frankie talks to Fern Higgins (Conroyd’s maid) and gets her to admit that she let the intruders in. They tied her up to make things look good, but she insists that the Conroyds were just going to be taken into the woods and released, to scare them into thinking the Communists were responsible. She says Scanlon convinced her to do it … and that he was banging her. When Zelda finds out that Scanlon was seducing other women besides her to cover up some shenanigans with the company’s books, she gets pissed off and offers to help catch him. Frankie 
gives Trudy some extra money to help her family. Later, Zelda tells Scanlon that she was banging Logan and that he kept a second set of books as insurance. She asks Scanlon to pay her off to keep quiet and he agrees. But he figures Trudy put Zelda up to it and pulls a gun on her. Frankie arrives with all the other women who work there (most of whom Scanlon was apparently fucking … where did he get the energy?) and he realizes he can’t kill them all. Turns out he was skimming to pay for all his mistresses and Logan found out. Scanlon killed him and figured the Commies would be perfect scapegoats.
Flo lets Frankie know that Scanlon is going to prison and thanks her for letting her help with the case. Mary tells the milkman that if he ever wants
to get rid of the horse, she’ll take him. Conroyd meets with the workers to hear their demands and Frankie suggests that he actually listen … and maybe should start paying the women the same wage as the men. Zelda tells Trudy she wants to teach workers about their rights and how to stand up for themselves.
This is a pretty good episode, dealing with the whole Red Scare that was so 
prevalent back in the 1920s. We always think of that as an American thing, but Canada had its own problems with Communist paranoia. Frankie and Trudy (both working-class gals) are naturally sympathetic to the downtrodden workers, but they manage to keep open minds. Zelda is an interesting character, the small-town girl who’s out of her depth in the big city. It’s nice to see her get toughened up by her experience and decide to help others. I wondered if Zelda Purser was the name of a real-life union organizer, but I couldn’t find anything so I guess she’s made up. We get to learn a bit more about the main characters here too: Flo has a lot of “gentleman friends”, but
apparently suffered some kind of big loss a while back. Maybe her husband died in the war? Mary seems like a nice girl, almost prudish at times, but remains open-minded enough to try new things. (Frankie introduced her to green tea in the first episode and Turkish coffee here.) And we find out that Trudy’s family sometimes has trouble making ends meet (and that Trudy’s mom doesn’t really approve of her being a detective).
Noticeable Things:
- Apparently prohibition is still on at this time. I think prohibition started earlier in Canada than in the United States and ended at different times in various provinces. In Ontario it ended in 1927, which fits if this episode is set around 1922.
- Besides the references to the Wall Street bombing of 1920, the Winnipeg General Strike and the Boston police strike are mentioned, both of which happened in 1919.
- The weird horseshoe was because the horse had laminitis, a hoof problem that’s related to foundering.
- Apparently, Lauren Lee Smith had trouble with the vintage car in this episode.
Favourite Quotes:
- “I do not kid.” Mary letting the blacksmith know she doesn’t really have a sense of humour.
- “Nothing but girl problems for you.” Frankie pointing out to Scanlon that banging multiple women in the same factory may have been a mistake.