Joan Simpson had always lived in their present house. In childhood she went to the neighborhood school and on to Bassick High, where she graduated in 1946. There followed two years in the Junior College of Commerce in New Haven, learning shorthand and typing, where she proved herself a more than capable student. Mrs. Simpson demonstrated her point by getting Joan’s high school and Junior College diplomas, and Fellows was properly impressed. After that, Joan got a job in an accounting firm, but didn’t care much for it and in October of 1950 took another job as private secretary to E. M. Busso, Vice President of the Masters Toy Company. “My husband thinks she wasn’t a nice girl with Mr. Busso,” she said. “I don’t think that’s right. We met Mr. Busso many times when he came to take Joan out and he was always a gentleman. He was very rich, but he didn’t talk down to us at all. He was nice to us and he thought the world of Joan. Just because he gave her some presents—he could afford them. He gave us that television set one Christmas. He was a very nice man. I always hoped,” she said sadly, “that perhaps he and Joan would get married, even if he was a lot older. That didn’t happen and I guess it’s because he looked on Joan more like a daughter. He was very nice to young girls trying to get ahead. When he let Joan go, which was in June back, let me see, I believe it was 1954, when he let her go, it was to give a new young girl a chance. As he explained it to Joan, she was ready for better things. Joan was quite bitter, but I’m sure Mr. Busso knew best.”
Fellows said, “Your husband didn’t share your view that Mr. Busso was—a father to Joan?”
“I think my husband was jealous because Mr. Busso did such nice things for her. My husband wouldn’t hardly talk to Joan. All the time she worked for Mr. Busso, which was nearly four years, she lived with us and he wouldn’t say hardly anything except to call her a tramp or sometimes worse things. But Joan was a good girl. She lived with us. She didn’t have her own apartment.”
After her release from Masters Toys, Joan spent several months idling around, doing nothing. She went on a Nassau cruise that summer on her savings and stayed around the house the rest of the time until after Labor Day. “She didn’t think Mr. Busso treated her fairly,” Mrs. Simpson said. “She didn’t know it was for her own good, because Mr. Busso was a nice man and wealthy and gave us presents and a man like that wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t right.”
That fall she hunted for a job again and obtained one with the Fizz-Rite Company in town and continued to live at home and at odds with her father until she was transferred to the newly-opened branch bottling plant. She bought a secondhand car and commuted the first few weeks, then sold the car and moved to Townsend, taking a furnished room in a boarding house, the name of which Mrs. Simpson couldn’t remember. It was a temporary arrangement, for she wasn’t happy with it and when she had the opportunity to move in with two other girls in a two-bedroom apartment, she took it.
“We didn’t see her often after she sold her car,” Mrs. Simpson said. “Where she lived wasn’t so far away, but it takes a long time by train. She had to catch the local into Stamford or take a bus and then get the train to Bridgeport. I guess it was hard for her, especially with her father so dead set against her. I thought maybe she might buy another car, but she wouldn’t because she wasn’t making as much money and her new boss wasn't generous, like Mr. Busso, and didn’t give her presents.”
The one thing Fellows noted that Mrs. Simpson had overlooked in her long and detailed recital, were men in Joan’s life. He asked about that. “Oh, she had dates,” Mrs. Simpson said. “When she was in school, she was very popular. The boys used to line up for her then. Of course, when she went to business college she didn’t have as much time for dates, but she had quite a few. After she got her job, though, it was different. I guess she didn’t meet so many single men. There were a few, of course. When she first went to work for Masters some of the men there took her out, but then they stopped for some reason or other. One by one they dropped out.” She said sadly, “I think perhaps Joan was hoping too much to marry Mr. Busso. I think maybe she discouraged those other boys from coming around. I think maybe she shouldn’t have. She should have known Mr. Busso was only interested in seeing her get ahead.”
CHAPTER XXI
Wednesday, 3:00-4:30
Wilks and Fellows compared notes over coffee in a Bridgeport diner in the middle of the afternoon. Fellows related the details of his interview with Mrs. Simpson and said, “The husband came back in before I left. They’re going to view the body and take care of the funeral business. And I stopped in at headquarters. Not a whisper on the Jean Sherman angle. No calls. He hasn’t been near the house. Not a sign.”
Wilks said, “You want my opinion? The guy is a
