Remy smiled, and we went silent for a moment, scanning the stores. The bartender and waitress from Scala’s were gone, and I turned to my partner.

“So . . . you said to meet you here.” I glanced around. “What’s the plan?”

“Well,” she said, “two days ago, I started researching that partnership you told me about.”

“Lauten Hartley’s partnership?” I asked, referring to the company that owned the liquor store. “FJF Investments?”

Remy nodded, and outside a single car passed us. A beat-up Hyundai Santa Fe.

“The Golden Oaks liquor store.” She pointed across the street. “If you believe the filings, the store was making good money. Lottery tickets and hard liquor mostly. And then it just shuttered. Out of nowhere. Right past Christmas two years ago.”

I stared over at the façade that once read Golden Oaks.

I still couldn’t explain why I’d told my wife that I was too busy to help with her battery problem at the roadside back in December of ’17. I’d been consumed with this robbery and asked Lena to call her father, Marvin.

Marvin arrived at the side of I-32. But as he spoke to his daughter at her window, a car struck Marvin’s vehicle into Lena’s. And down the hill my wife’s Jeep went. Into the Tullumy River, where Lena and Jonas would drown in minutes.

The empty space I stared at across the way had no sign on it. The windows that were once crowded with liquor bottles were blocked with bars. And behind them, someone had placed plywood with the words “out of business” spray-painted on the wood.

The words “Golden Oaks,” which used to sit on a horizontal sign above the front door, were gone, as were the words “Liquor,” “Fine Wine,” and an illustration of a yellow oak tree.

The only remnants, in fact, that it had been a package store at all were the vertical letters that spelled LIQUOR attached to a concrete spear that stuck up into the sky and was probably too expensive to remove.

“Are you okay?” Remy asked.

I’d felt a curious calm in the last day or so, not just because I’d taken time off, but because I get this sort of focus when I chase a lead. And no lead mattered more to me than this one.

“Yeah,” I said. “Are we breaking in?”

“I prefer to call it exploring,” Remy said.

25

We walked across 20th Street and passed the front of the Golden Oaks. Moved past the package store and turned down Pike to an alley behind the place.

A rolling gate stood between the worn asphalt of the alley and the back of the store property. It was my height roughly, but above the gate was a string of razor wire, formed into a series of loops.

I took off my hoodie and swung it atop the sharp wire, pulling the fabric down so it formed a barrier above the razor to grab on to.

Remy found a foothold and climbed over, disappearing out of sight.