“What do they call this area nowadays?” I asked Remy.

“East Fork,” she said.

My dress shoes crunched underfoot. We were a hundred feet from the edge of 914, and I stared across the highway to the other side.

Two buildings sat across the road, their architecture mirroring the novelty store, except without all the crazy signs. One of the places was a bar by the name of Tandy’s. The other was a package store called Lucky’s Liquor.

Remy was almost at the front of the gift shop, and I caught up with her.

The door dinged as we entered.

Inside, the place looked like the love child of those temporary seasonal stores and your local ninety-nine-cent place. Along crowded shelves, it was Christmas, Easter, and Halloween, all at the same time. A giant sign suspended on two wires called the shop The stocking stuffer capital of Georgia. Never mind that it was still September, last time I checked.

“Christ,” I said under my breath, looking at all the crap you didn’t need.

A minute later, Remy motioned me over to a stack of tees.

The top shirt had a familiar message, but a different picture. I don’t have a drinking problem, it announced in a big bubbly font. Below that were four frames, drawn like a comic book. Each square contained a cartoonish-looking man. I drink. I get drunk. I fall down. No problem, the panels read.

I walked over to a woman in her late thirties at the register. She had a thin frame and freckles with big eyes set in a small head. She was pretty, but at the same time, like a caricature of someone else. A gaunt princess with two or three features that were unnaturally large. Her name tag read Nina.

“How you doing, Nina?” I smiled.

“Better now,” she said, her eyes landing on mine.

I flashed my shield and held up the T-shirt. “We’re looking for a guy who bought a handful of these.”

“Well, they’re pretty popular,” she said. “You know anything about this guy?”

I pulled out my phone and showed her pictures of Vinorama and Dilmendes. For Dilmendes, I used his DMV photo, but for Vinorama, the driver, I showed her the close-up of him in the front seat of the car.

“Holy shit,” she said. “Are they dead?”

A gaunt princess who cut straight to the chase.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“Well, they were in here for sure,” she said. “Just the other day.”

There was an old-timey popcorn machine at the far end of the store, and the smell of imitation butter found its way over to us.

“Do you remember which day?” Remy asked.

Nina widened her stare at the picture. Her eyes were blue and wide with a perfect black circle inside, like a painted doll.

“It was right before closing,” she said. “Tuesday night.”

This was two nights before the men were killed.

“Were they on foot?” I asked. “Or maybe you remember what kinda car they drove?”