The Garhardt Hotel: 3

If you missed parts 1 and 2, find them here.

Chicago 2006

The Garhardt Hotel

Dust coated every inch of the place. Not a soul stirred. The once vibrant display of life abounding now grayed into a lifeless abyss. No one had disturbed its solitude for many, many days gone by.

Buckley shadowed the door for the first time since that tragic incident, the loss of that poor, sweet woman. His back hunched and his hands were much more wrinkled than they had been the last time he grasped this door handle. He had withered along with the hotel, as if their fates were intertwined.

Sensationalism spiked the hotel’s business for a small span after the murder, but ultimately put a black mark on the brand. The hotel had closed not long after the news spread. Guests had no desire to stay at a place where the bellhops killed the patrons. The doors were shut up, never to be opened again.

Buckley had been locked away as well, for the majority of his life. No proclamation of innocence could sway his accusers. He had been just as doomed as the hotel. The two were kindred spirits, and he could feel that now as he ducked under the chains and trespassed into the long lost lobby that he had known as home.

Flakes of grime flitted through the stagnant air as he dragged his feet. Many of the checkered floor tiles had been uprooted, creating an array of tripping hazards with no pattern. One piece cracked under his heel and he nearly toppled backward. He gripped the concierge desk for balance, dirtying his fingertips.

The rotary phone remained where it always had been, though the wiring had been chewed through and the receiver hung off the edge of the counter. Buckley stooped with a grunt and replaced it on its holder, his handprint left behind.

Lost on memory lane, he abandoned nostalgia and headed for the stairs, determined to see through what he came to accomplish.

The grand staircase had fallen into disrepair and his frail legs struggled to make the climb, over debris, gaping holes, and missing rails. Yet he persevered for five flights, slow and steady, only stumbling twice. By the time he came to his destination, his breath rasped and his skeletal hands trembled. The strain of the journey up played a big part in this, but fear crept in as well, as much as he hated to admit it. He was a stone’s throw away from answers, yet part of him wanted to turn back. No answer could give him back the years he lost. Nevertheless, he still had to know.

Buckley had played out every detail of that day a thousand times, being left alone in a cramped cell with nothing but time and thoughts to occupy him. By the time a viable theory had formed, it was far too late to change what had been done. Yet he would know the truth. With all the guest rooms ajar after the final clean out from years ago, he creaked aside the door for room 503, the room that had been lodged in by one Mr. Charles M. Sanders. From the research dug up since Buckley’s release, he found only one other tenant stayed in this room after Mr. Sanders before the hotel closed permanently, and it just so happened to be another man by the name of Mr. Sanders. His son, Jonathan K. Sanders.

The last guests left in a hurry, by the looks of it. Many of their belongings remained behind, melding into the design of the room. A chair overlaid with a crinkled shirt, a pocket mirror propped on the vanity, the bed untended. A room that appeared to be lived in, captured as an endless moment in time, despite its decades of disuse.

A woman had screamed at the time of the murder, of this Buckley was certain. The pitch of it still rang in his ears to this day. Though his hearing could hardly pick up anything else in his old age, the scream remained. Yet the young woman who had been strangled could not have screamed. She had likely passed away by the time the rest of the hotel heard the cry.

Therefore another woman had to have been on the scene. Not the perpetrator, perhaps, but present, and willing to lie.

In learning the name of the victim, the charming woman with the rosy cheeks and ivory curls, the solution had become clear, though no one else would pursue it. Her name was Mrs. Isabella L. Sanders, wife to Mr. Jonathan Sanders and daughter-in-law to Mr. Charles Sanders.

The motivation was not hard to discover once he learned that Jonathan Sanders was the stingy man with the case that entered the hotel that morning, and the woman on his arm was not his wife.

Why Isabella Sanders was at The Garhardt Hotel that day, only she could tell, but Buckley wondered if perhaps she suspected her husband’s infidelity. She had smiled at Buckley in the lobby as she exited the elevator that day, and her husband had espied her, as he had made clear in his testimony. Jealousy, and fear of being caught at his own game, would both be strong motivators, and also a good excuse to condemn the innocent bellboy for the crime.

Did Mr. Charles Sanders come into play? It was hard for Buckley to tell. He must have been aware of the murder after the fact, at the least. He was protecting his son.

Maybe Mr. Jonathan Sanders and the mistress confronted Isabella on the elevator, stepped off at floor five to join Mr. Charles, and let Isabella ride on up to Buckley. Or perhaps all of them converged in Mr. Sanders room where a fight broke out and, only three doors from the elevator, they dragged her out and rid themselves of the body. And at some point, the mistress screamed in horror. Yet the details would be impossible to know, and irrelevant regardless. What Buckley knew is that Mr. Jonathan Sanders had murdered his wife and pinned it on the help. After all the years imprisoned, Isabella’s smile had only become more beautiful and breathtaking in his memory, and his rage at her killer only grew hotter. Yet vengeance had passed from reach. As far as he could find, only he and Abernathy still survived, the two youngest of the rabble that day. It was all an atrocity that had to be left behind for sanity's sake.

Exploring the room in the hopes of finding the last piece of closure, he finally kneeled by the bed to spot the mysterious case tucked beneath, the one that he, as the bellhop, was not allowed to touch. He rested it on his knees, his stomach flipping, seconds from obtaining the last piece of the puzzle. What is it that Mr. Jonathan Sanders had to hide besides murder?

Buckley clicked the case open to find- nothing. The entire case had been emptied and the evidence was long gone, just like everything else. All of Buckley’s history had turned to dust. He wished he would turn to dust too.

Yet he had to go on. With tears snaking down the curves of his cheeks, he finally lifted his chin, marched back down the steps with all the poise he had left in him, and slid beneath the chains of the door. If time wanted to forget the sins of the past, then he should take a lesson in that as well. Everyone was gone, and he was still here. He would move on too.

The Garhardt Hotel faded into the fog behind him, and for the few years he had left, he spent them as a free man, never letting the old crimes darken his days again.

© 2021 by Kelsey Garber