Those papers might have been astonished by the crowds that attended Otelia Brooks’s service at the Mercy Street Baptist Church. I have been fortunate to see many ravishing things in my life, but the sight of hundreds of women, both celebrated and private citizens, gathered together in their Otelia hats is among the most memorable. Some I recognized—a well-known actress and a noted educator, as well as a stunning woman who brought her six-year-old daughter, who was wearing the very hat I had seen her mother wear so many years ago. Others Ella Dodson identified for me, such as Mary Kenner, whose invention she had to whisper given that we were in a church. At one point, she indicated a large flower arrangement and said if I looked closely, I would see they had been sent from the White House, the first lady having received a hat, but only after she supported Walter White’s antilynching legislation.
“You don’t know what I had to do to get her to make it,” Ella complained after the service. “I called her over and over, saying, Just send it, it’ll help. She said, That woman has a hundred people making hats for her. She doesn’t need mine. She won’t look right in it anyway.”
“I imagine she was right about that.”
“I said, I will keep calling you every day, twice a day, until you do this. She threatened to tear out her phone. Finally, she said, If I read in your paper that she’s been helpful, I’ll consider it. She never would let me write about her work. I think she only left that house to go to church.”
It was true I had only seen her on very few occasions, although she had been kind enough to attend my uncle’s funeral. “I think she was happiest in her workroom.”
“I suspect it’s where she felt safe,” conceded Ella Dodson, adding with a roll of the eyes, “Surrounded by cloth and straw and all those things she could twist and bend to her will.”
I looked out at the women still leaving the church, their hats creating a vast landscape of shape and color and movement. Acts of will, yes, even ruthless will. But joyous, generous, and celebratory. And so, so beautiful. Otelia Brooks might have avoided the world outside her workroom, but she had sent out the deepest part of herself.
During Watergate, Ella liked to call me to gloat over the Post’s triumph over the New York papers. Funny, remembering Watergate. Leo and I watched so much of that coverage. At the time, he was in rehearsals for Days Gone By, which was a showcase of his songs. He said the book was awful, the dancing worse, but the songs were fine. He let me watch one of the dress rehearsals, and we laughed over the costumes. “Pickle Barrel Rag” has long been forgotten, as has “Lady Lion Tamer.” But the first act ended with a lovely rendition of “But on Fridays,” which has been recorded by everyone from Sophie Tucker to Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand. The critics were divided as to whether the show was a charming evocation of America’s past or shamelessly sentimental and crassly commercial. (“The second,” said Leo. “Obviously.”) But they all agreed it was an effective showcase for the greatest American composer of the last hundred years. Which was, said Leo, the point.
There was a tribute concert to him at the time of the Bicentennial. He was invited to the capital, but he declined, and so we watched it from the living room, eating off trays. As it ended with flags and a vast chorus singing the song so famous most people have forgotten he wrote it, he said, “I’ll say this for it. Unlike ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ it’s a song you can actually sing.”
“It’s a great song.”
“Not bad for a singing waiter.”
“Not bad at all, Mr. Hirschfeld.”
Scott Joplin died in 1917 at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center. Penniless, he was buried in a group plot in Queens. And my prediction proved wrong. The Marshall Hotel closed down in 1913.
Clementine Pickett ended her crusade against the sins of the flesh soon after George Rutherford’s crimes were revealed and turned her considerable energies to outlawing the consumption of alcohol. Here she was more successful, becoming something of a national figure. She had learned a thing or two from Bill Danvers; prayers and hymns were all very well, but a more direct approach brought the press. She took to carrying a small axe, which she swung with great panache in saloons across the city as she railed against the devastation liquor had wrought upon American families. Through it all, her son was at her side, driving her to her many engagements and ejecting the more aggressive hecklers.
Bill Danvers washed up in the East River under the Hell Gate Bridge, then under construction. His throat had been cut, and nobody much cared to find out who had done it.
Dolly Rutherford had a change of heart about her husband’s innocence when she realized that as the widow of a monster, she excited far more interest than she ever had with her salons. Once she was out of mourning, she was much in demand at dinner parties, where she regaled her fellow diners with tales of her life with the Beauty Killer. She professed suspicions I certainly never witnessed when her husband was alive and a terror that was quite out of character for her. But people seemed to prefer her version, so much so that she wrote a book, which was then made into a movie. Starring Lillian Gish, as a matter of fact.
Turning back to the front page, I try to read the article about the young man who wanted to kill the president over a vision of a woman who existed only in his head. But the memory of George Rutherford has made me tired and angry with this story. It’s one I’ve heard too many times.
And so I turn to the bottom half of the paper to read that three men have been attacked by a mob in Brooklyn. The three men were black; white teenagers swarmed their car, stopping it in the street. They threw beer cans, smashed windows, broke a bottle over one man’s head as he tried to escape. Two of the men did get away. But William Turks, a transit worker with a ten-year-old daughter, was dragged from his car and beaten to death. This is also a story heard too many times, and for a moment I am tempted to set it aside.
But then I turn my bad old eyes back to the account.
ALSO BY MARIAH FREDERICKS
A Death of No Importance
Death of a New American
YA Novels
The True Meaning of Cleavage
Head Games
Crunch Time
The Girl in the Park
About the Author
Mariah Fredericks was born and raised in New York City, where she still lives with her family. She is the author of several YA novels. A Death of No Importance was her first adult novel. Visit her website at MariahFredericksBooks.com, and follow her on Twitter @MariahFrederick, or sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraphs
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
Also by Mariah Fredericks
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
First published in the United States by Minotaur Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group
DEATH OF AN AMERICAN BEAUTY. Copyright © 2020 by Mariah Fredericks. All
rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover design by Rowen Davis and David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover photographs: woman © Ildiko Neer / Trevillion Images; New York © New-York Historical Society / Getty Images
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fredericks, Mariah, author.
Title: Death of an American beauty / Mariah Fredericks.
Description: First Edition. | New York: Minotaur Books, 2020. | Series: A Jane Prescott novel; 3
Identifiers: LCCN 2019048853 | ISBN 9781250210883 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250210890 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3606.R435 D42914 2020 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019048853
eISBN 9781250210890
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
First Edition: April 2020
Death of an American Beauty Page 23