“Yes, the cemetery. He died in 1930.”
I said, “Thank you very much,” and went out. He didn’t say anything as I pulled the door shut.
I went back to the clerk’s office and told the suspicious-eyed woman that I wanted to see the file in the case of Lintig versus Lintig. It didn’t take ten seconds to dig it up.
I looked through the papers. There was the complaint, the answer, the cross-complaint, a stipulation giving the plaintiff ten days’ additional time within which to answer the cross-complaint, another stipulation giving him twenty days, a third stipulation giving him thirty days, and then a notice of default. Apparently, summons had never been served on Vivian Carter, and for that reason the case had never been brought to trial, nor did it appear that it had ever been formally dismissed.
I walked out feeling the suspicious hostility of her eyes on the back of my neck.
I went back to the hotel, sat in the writing-room and scribbled a note to Bertha Cool on hotel stationery:
B. Check through the passenger lists on ships leaving San Francisco during December 1919 for the East coast via the Canal. Find the one that carried Mrs. Lintig. Check the names of other passengers, and see if you can locate some fellow-traveller. Mrs. Lintig was full of matrimonial troubles, and may have spilled the beans to some fellow-passenger. It’s a long time ago, but the lead may give us pay dirt. The trail looks pretty cold at this end.
I scribbled my initials on the report, put it in a stamped, addressed envelope, and was assured by the clerk it would catch the two-thirty train out.
I tried the Grotto for lunch, and then went back to the Blade office. “I want to run an ad,” I said.
The girl with the thoughtful brown eyes stretched a hand across the counter for the ad.