Judith Morgan, soon to be Judith Whelan, had been uncertain about the choice. The bridal boutique, on upper Madison Avenue, offered easily fifty different wedding dresses and so the decision had taken some time. Sean couldn’t help her with this one, of course. No groom was going to see his bride’s wedding dress before the aisle walk. And her mother, a woman who was convinced that price was the best measure of quality, would have bankrupted the family with the dress that she wanted her daughter to wear. Not what Morgan wanted.
The blonde looked at the satin confection in the mirror once more and, while she didn’t smile, was pleased beyond words. She turned slowly, viewed as much of the back as she could and returned to pole position. She’d stayed true to her goal of dropping the thirteen pounds and the dress curved the way it should curve, clung the way it should cling, but had plenty of drape and spare room in reserve.
Eyeing the scallops, the reasonable train (half the length of her sister’s monstrosity), the shimmery cloth and the tulle at the shoulder, she knew she’d made the right decision.
“It’s a winner, my dear,” Frank said and though, sure, he had an interest in selling her the three-thousand-dollar dress, she knew he meant it.
She hugged him. This was the final fitting. Two weeks till launch but she had a business trip to one of her ad agency’s clients starting in a few days and wouldn’t have much time after she got back to handle all the plans that a wedding with 257 guests entailed. The get-the-dress box had to be ticked now.
And it had been.
“When is the crew coming in?” Frank asked.
The bridesmaids. For the matching teal dresses, the matching shoes, the matching panty hose, the matching corsages. Frank was a godsend.
“A few days. Rita’ll call, make an appointment.”
“I’ll get champagne in.”
“I love you, you know,” Morgan said and blew him a kiss.
It was 7 p.m., closing time. When she’d arrived, an hour ago, the shop had been hopping—all the young professional fiancées, busy during the week, had only Saturday and Sunday to select and tailor the dress of a lifetime. Now it was empty except for the two of them, and the tailor in the back.
Frank helped her off the platform where she’d been standing for the final pinning.
As she climbed down, she took one last look in the mirror. And happened to glance at the reflection not of herself but of the front window, opening onto busy Madison Avenue. There was, as always, street traffic on Madison: at the moment, folks headed to dinner, or returning home from a Sunday of shopping, plays, movies and early suppers.
What took Morgan’s attention, though, was a man looking into the window.
She couldn’t see his face clearly; there wasn’t much light on the street any longer and he was backlit from headlights and a streetlamp.
Odd, a man in a dark jacket and stocking cap staring at a window full of wedding dresses.
He moved on. Probably the father of a newly engaged girl, pausing to gaze somberly at yet another expense confronting him after John or Keith or Robert had decided to do the honorable thing.
A few minutes later she was out of the changing room, back in the fatty jeans, which were so delightfully loose around her hips. T-shirt. A reindeer sweater because she was in one of those moods. Judith soon-to-be-Whelan was nothing if not playful. She rolled a scarf around her neck, then pulled on her black cotton jacket and donned supple leather gloves.
She said goodbye to Frank, who was shutting out the lights.
Stepping outside, she turned north toward her apartment.
Thinking about the dress, about the honeymoon. Atlantis in the Bahamas.
Making love while listening to the ocean. Something they’d never done. Ditto, eating conch fritters. Which Morgan knew they served in the Bahamas. She always did her homework.
She stopped at the corner deli, got a bottle of Pinot Grigio and hit the salad bar, throwing into a plastic container lettuce, tomatoes and “fixens” (she’d once heard a customer gripe about the misspelling but, she’d thought: I’m sorry, is there any confusion? And besides, how much Korean do you speak?).
Then back onto the street and to her building. Yes, it was the Upper East Side, but that included a lot of territory that was not Trump-worthy. Her brownstone was a fourth-floor walk-up, in sore need of a power washing and paint job.
She walked to the lobby door and was just unlocking it and stepping in when she heard a rush of footsteps behind her. The man in dark clothing, the same man outside of Frank’s—now with his head encased in a ski mask—pushed her inside.
Her barked scream was silenced by the hand over her mouth. He walked her fast down the corridor to an alcove underneath the stairs, where she and the tenant from the third floor kept their bikes. He swept the bikes aside and shoved her to the floor, a sitting position. He ripped her purse from her shoulder, the deli bag from her hand.
She stared at the pistol.
“Please…” Her voice was quaking.
“Shhh.”
He was, it seemed, listening for voices or footsteps. All was silent—except for the frantic pounding of Morgan’s heart, the raw gasp of her labored breathing.
He put the gun back in his pocket and then righted the bikes and leaned them upright against the wall so that anyone looking through the door wouldn’t see them on their sides and think something was wrong. Her leg protruded into the hall and he kicked it—gently—back under the stairs, so the limb wasn’t visible either. Then he crouched in front of her.
“What do you want? Please…just take whatever you want.”
“Gloves,” he snapped.
“You want my gloves.”
He laughed, sarcastically. Then grew angry. “Why I would want fucking gloves? I want you to take fucking gloves off.”
She did. And as he looked at her left hand she curled her right into a fist and slammed it into his jaw. “You fucker!” She hit him again, aiming low and missing the crotch by a few inches.
He blinked in surprise, not pain. His blue eyes were amused.
Morgan drew her arm back once more but his blow landed first—also to the jaw—and snapped her head into the wall. Her vision grew black and fuzzy for a moment. Then the focus returned.
“No good, lovebird hen.” Crouching over her, he gripped her hair, pulled her close. She smelled cigarette smoke and onions. Doused aftershave. Liquor. It took all her will not to vomit. Then thought maybe that would turn him off and tried to retch.
He shook her by the hair again, fiercely. A whisper: “No, no, no. No doing that. Okay?”
Morgan nodded. She was aware his eyes weren’t scanning her torso as she’d thought they would. His only interest was her fingers. Actually, just the ring finger.
That’s what he wanted. And it was clear to her now. Of course. A girl in a fancy Upper East Side bridal boutique. She’d be engaged…and she’d be wearing one hell of a rock.
Which she was.
Sean worked for Harper Stanley, on the foreign desk. His dad was a founder of Marsh and Royal, a big hedge fund. His mom was a partner at Logan, Sharp and Towne, a Wall Street law firm.
The ring on her finger had cost forty-two thousand dollars. It was anchored by a five-carat brilliant-cut diamond, with a one-carat marquis on either side.
“Take it,” she whispered.
His eyes flicked to hers. “Take what? Your virginity? Ha, that is joke. You smell to me like campus slut. How many men before your fiancé?”
She blinked. “I—”
“Does he know?” He then frowned. “Or you mean take purse, your credit cards? Hm, hm.” Feigning surprise, he said, “Oh, oh, my, you meaning your ring. That piece of stone on sad stub of finger. Does your fiancé like your hands? What’s his name?”
Crying now, Morgan said, “I am not telling you.”
The knife—one of those with the sliding blade—appeared. She screamed, until he brandished it and she fell silent.
The assailant looked at the front door. Listened again. No response. In fact, the building was two-thirds empty at the moment. One couple was on vacation. The gay guy was spending the weekend with his friends in the Hamptons. Two units were unrented.
Morgan was sure that Mr. and Mrs. Kieslowski were in for the night, chewing down Chinese and bingeing on Game of Thrones. They’d be no help.
She stared at the blade.