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Up N.C. 61, where the fields stretch forever, you'll find a burning candle for Bobby Lee.

Down Interstate 85, to the far busier world of Friendly Center, you'll see a sidewalk full of flowers and cards for Juan.

Drive five minutes toward the heart of Greensboro, to Red Mike Grocery, and you won't find anything by the front door.

At least not anymore.

But last month, something new appeared by the door every day. A card. A two-page letter. A single rose. A single cigarette. A clutch of flowers. A bunch of handprints on the glass.

All there to remember Mike.

Bobby Lee Taylor.

Juan Estevan Salado.

Mohammed "Mike" Ali.

We need to remember them, these victims of three recent, unsolved robberies.

And people have. Customers, friends, family, even apparent strangers have created makeshift memorials at the separate crime scenes to remember and grieve — as if with an exclamation mark — and in the end, these symbols seem to connect us with something deeper, a ritual that needs no words.

That's what happened outside Taylor's Service, outside Red Mike, and outside Old Navy, where Salado was shot Monday morning in the back of the head, as he carried bags of money from the store. A dozen customers were inside.

A few steps from the Old Navy door where Salado fell sit three potted poinsettias and a card that reads, in part: "I want your family to know that you will always be remembered."

Salado, a guard with Brink's Security, was engaged to be married. He was 25.

Stand outside Old Navy, near the memorial, and you'll see the crawl of cars and the stare of customers.

Conversations unfold unprovoked.

"Have they caught someone yet?" Old Navy shopper Lauren Hopper asked me the other day.

I told her no.

"It's just very sad," she said. "I was more sad than upset. Someone took someone's life when everyone else has the same problems with the economy this bad. People are crazy now.

"And the sad thing, he was my age and he was engaged. Just why?"

Phil Hicks asked the same question when he stopped by Taylor's Service, a country store and community gathering place that Bobby Lee ran with his wife Shirley.

Hicks, the store's coffee supplier, saw the candles, the flowers and the printed scrawl by the door that read, "We Love You Bobby! — Taylor's Store Crew."

He hadn't heard about the robbery that happened either late Dec. 6 or early Dec. 7.

When he did, he just shook his head.

"Why do bad things happen to such good people?" Hicks asked. "And she was such a sweet, sweet lady. She just loved that man, and for that to happen at this time of year.

"She'll never have another good Christmas in her life."

A few minutes after he left, two of Bobby Lee's longtime friends came. They told me Shirley intends to reopen the store. But not right yet.

"Oh man, things are changing," said John Albright, 68, a retired machine shop operator who had known Bobby Lee since 1969. "Things happen now that are hard to believe."

Taylor, a burly man with a crew cut, was a father and grandfather who ran his own gravel and paving company. He was 69.

Ali, a thick man with curly black hair, was a Jerusalem native who owned Red Mike with a good friend.

For him, it was a good place.

He met Nikki Tipton there in April. They were the same age, they fell in love, and they planned on getting married in November.

But on Nov. 9, five days before their wedding, Ali was shot behind the counter, as Sunday school started across the street at First Presbyterian Church. He was 29.

Today, you can still see in the counter's particle board a bullet hole, the size of a dime.

And near that bullet hole stands Tipton. She works at Red Mike because it helps her remember the good times.

In a few months, Tipton will go to the coast. She'll drop in the ocean letters, notes, flowers, rosary beads and even a single Newport cigarette with the note, "I owed you one.''

Ask her about the trip, and she'll say Mike always wanted to see the water. But ask her about the stuff, and she'll simply nod toward the door.

It's from the makeshift memorial, she says, created by customers, friends and strangers. Right by the door.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com