Blue Stew (Second Edition) Read Online Free Page A

with a phone in one hand, looked around for the voice, “Oh. No, nothing yet, Maddie.”
    Nigel turned away, back towards the window. Why was she here? But, really, why were any of them here besides Henry and himself? Over the past year, none of them had made any effort to remain close with Walter.
    But, of course Nigel knew why they all were here. He looked over his shoulder, through the small crowd of people pretending to be calm and comfortable when they were anything but, to his girlfriend, Jamie Astley. She was seated stoically on an armchair across the living room. She was a very strong-minded, persuasive woman, he acknowledged with a faint smile.
    Nigel Kensington was a software programmer and system manager for a regional landscaping company, and he looked the part: lanky body, neat haircut, and large, rectangular reading glasses. That night, he also looked the part of one waiting for a call from the hospital regarding a family member undergoing a dangerous procedure. He had to keep alternating which hand held the phone because his palms were sweating so much.
    Excluding Jamie, Nigel could sense that his growing hope was shared by the hushed, fidgety collection of people loitering about his living room: that Walter would simply not show up.
    Predictably, that was exactly when Nigel heard his front door pull open from the adjacent hallway. Nigel frowned as he set down the phone and started for the hallway—typically, no one but strangers and delivery truck drivers used the front door.
     “Nigel?” a breathless voice called.
    “ Walter? ”
    Nigel rounded through the doorway and into the hallway.
    In spite of—or maybe because of—the tension that had been twisting his gut all night, Nigel laughed when he looked at Walter, half-drowned in rain as he was.
    “Walter, you need to get that shit-bucket repaired. You can’t just have your car break down whenever there’s some rain or—”
    “Wasn’t that,” Walter breathed between labored inhales. “I was hit by some murder victim. Near the bridge.”
    “You were what by what? ” Nigel frowned comically. “That didn’t make any sense.”
    “No, it didn’t. I think the guy was . . . fatally mutilated and then thrown into an out-of-control Jeep to die . . . I need to use your phone.”
    “. . . What? ”
    “I need to call the police.”
    Nigel threw up what he intended to be a calming hand, “Just . . . say that one more time. In a way that makes sense . Please.”
    “I can’t. I also saw someone floating down the river. Dead . . . or dying.”
    Nigel’s face and hand dropped. He began to shake his head. Suddenly it made sense, and he was not happy. “You think it’s funny to show up to your intervention like this? ”
    “I’m not fucking tripping.” Walter started down the hallway, each footstep leaving behind a puddle on the glossy hardwood floor. “I’m deadly serious.” He was heading towards the kitchen and the nearest known telephone. He didn’t notice the utterly silent crowd of slack-jawed people standing in the clean, elegantly-furnished living room as he passed.
    “You really were in an accident?” Nigel, momentarily stunned, called after him.
    “Yeah.”
    “Are you okay?”
    “No.”
    In the bright, high-ceilinged kitchen, Walter grabbed the phone and pressed 9-1-1.
    Nigel stood by in silent bewilderment as Walter talked to the emergency operator. He explained the gruesome and unbelievable situation just as poorly as he had for Nigel.
    Walter hung up.
    “They’re on their way.”
    “What the hell is going on, Walter?” Henry Potter had been the only one among the bewildered crowd in the living room brave enough to move while Walter had been on the phone.
    Walter sighed deeply, “I really don’t know. All I know is I was rammed off the road by some dead guy who had half of his face cut off.”
    “. . . What . . . why are you so sure he didn’t get his face busted open in the accident ?”
    Nigel nodded his endorsement