DARREN CASH APPEARED AT MY OFFICE DOOR MONDAY morning. A long, thin tube of rolled-up paper-a blueprint, I was guessing-was tucked under one arm. I said hello, then nodded at the tube. “Whatcha got?”
“I was hoping you’d ask.” He slid a rubber band down off one end and flattened a property-tax plat map on my desk.
“Fascinating,” I said.
“Actually, it is. This is Middlebrook Pike here,” he said, tracing a line that curved from near downtown out to the west and then south. “Here’s the Lathams’ farm.”
I studied the boundaries on the plat map. “How big is it-a hundred acres?”
“Almost,” he said. “Eighty.”
“That’s a mighty big parcel so close to downtown Knoxville,” I said. “I’m surprised it hasn’t been carved up into subdivisions and shopping centers by now.”
“Mrs. Latham was quite attached to it. She grew up on that farm; it’d been in her family over a century. Notice anything unusual about the plat map?”
I studied it. “Looks like somebody set a cup of coffee down on it,” I said, pointing to a circular brown stain in one corner.
He laughed. “True, but not quite what I was after. If you were a developer, is there anything particular about that piece of property that would catch your eye?”
“Besides there being a lot of it?” He nodded, so I studied the map more closely. “Well, it’s got great frontage along Middlebrook Pike.”
“Keep going,” he said.
“It also backs up to the 640 bypass,” I said.
“Anything else?”
“And the railroad cuts through one corner. So potentially it’s easy to reach by road or by rail.”
“And if you were going to do something with that property, what would you do?”
“I’d expand the Body Farm,” I said. “We’re running out of space for all the donated bodies we’re getting these days.”
Cash laughed.
“If the neighbors wouldn’t let me do that, maybe I’d put in a fancy office park. Or a mix of office buildings, high-end retail shops, and fancy condos.”
“You missed your calling,” he said. “That’s exactly the master plan the developer had in mind for it.”
“What developer?”
“The developer Stuart Latham was talking to behind his wife’s back. You got any guess what that land would be worth?”
I thought for a moment. “Oh, I’d say at least several million.”
“More like twenty-five,” he said, and I whistled. “Land in that area’s going for three hundred thousand an acre, and that’s a unique parcel. Of course, it’s worth twenty-five mil only if somebody’s willing to sell it.”
“Mrs. Latham wasn’t willing to sell?”
“Bingo,” he said.
“Was Mr. Latham willing to sell?”
“Mr. Latham was eager to sell,” he said. “I guess he’d gotten tired of renting cars. He approached a developer-same folks who built the big Turkey Creek development-about three months ago. Stuart was a man with a plan.”
“But the farm wasn’t Stuart’s to sell-it was his wife’s family’s, right?”
“Right.”
I thought back to an earlier conversation. “You said Mrs. Latham didn’t have a life-insurance policy, but did she have a will?”
“She had a will.”
“Was he the heir?”
“He was.”
“Ah. Motive,” I said.
“Motive,” he said. He waited half a beat, then added, “We’re going to the grand jury for the indictment tomorrow. Stay tuned.”