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WHITSETT — Off N.C. 61, where the rolling fields stretch toward forever, you'll see a great big sign go up this weekend outside Taylor's Service & Grocery.

If you see it, you'll read about the new $10,000 reward, see the square-jawed photo of Bobby Lee Taylor and maybe remember that Saturday about three months ago.

They still talk about it at Taylor's. They come in, spot Hazel Dean or Robert Tickle behind the counter, and ask the same question every day: "Do you know anything?''

The answer is always the same.

No arrests. Just rumors, speculation and the comment Bobby's widow, Shirley, always hears from the Guilford County detective investigating the case: "As long as they let me, I'll be on that job.''

He knows where to find her. At her husband's store, behind the counter, surrounded by Bobby's old handwritten notes, standing in the very spot where a bullet ended his life Dec. 6 at age 69 .

After his death, Shirley, his wife of 40 years, didn't come to the store for nearly a month. But on Jan. 5 , she returned and reopened Taylor's Service because she needed to.

The customers needed it, too. They had no place to sit and jaw about racing, ACC basketball, spring planting, politics or their latest hand at Setback , a card game, at the Formica table beneath the TV.

When Shirley opened her husband's store again, the door opened constantly and familiar faces came through. Some headed toward the back to sit around an old wood stove, near the two pool tables.

Others bought what they needed — a pair of $22 overalls, a 19-cent carriage screw, or what Hazel Dean, Shirley's younger sister, likes to call the $1 Breakfast: a pack of cheese crackers and a soda.

But whatever they came in for, Bobby's customers always made time for Shirley. They helped her by taking out the trash, lighting the wood stove and thawing out frozen water pipes.

And by just being there.

At 7 a.m., when she opened up, a handful of her husband's regular customers would meet her. All to make her feel safe and comfortable in a place she never ran until her husband's death.

Since World War II, a community store had always existed along this bend in the road off N.C. 61. Bobby Lee Taylor, a Greensboro firefighter until 1995 and an owner of a grading company, bought the store 21 years ago .

He didn't make much money. But he believed there was more to life than money. He believed in friendships, Jeff Gordon, Duke basketball and his grandchildren, who called him "Paw Paw. ''

And he believed in his customers. He once told Robert Tickle , his employee and longtime friend, "I want to treat people fair.'' And he did.

He let customers buy on credit. He kept tabs on their accounts the old-fashioned way - by writing what they owed on a piece of paper by the cash register. And he stayed open as long as customers were in the store — sometimes until 2 a.m.

Those late hours worried Shirley. In the past year while driving home from the store, Bobby had fallen asleep, had hit a tree and had run into a ditch.

"Bobby, haven't you heard the saying, 'Three strikes and you're out?' '' Shirley once asked him. "You need to close the store early.''

He didn't. Sometimes she stayed awake until he came home. On Dec. 6, Shirley fell asleep on the couch, waiting for Bobby, when her daughters woke her up with the news.

"Daddy's been shot.''

At least 1,800 people came to his wake. Since then, people have come through the store every day to see her and talk about the generous, cantankerous spirit of a man Shirley describes as "sweet as sugar, but a devil on wheels.''

Today, Tickle closes the store every night at 9 p.m. And every morning, right after sunrise, Shirley opens it back up.

That, she says, is comforting.

She hears about Bobby in almost every conversation and thinks about him when she spots one of his handwritten notes around the store. And there's another handwritten note, this one from a customer, taped above a rack of packaged pork skins.

To the Taylor Family

You Are In My Heart And Prayers!

God Bless You

That helps, too.

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