“Four to Score” by Janet Evanovich

My summer with bounty hunter Stephanie Plum continues with “Four to Score”.

Stephanie has been asked to find Maxine Nowicki, who was arrested for stealing her ex-boyfriend’s car. Maxine never showed for her court appearance and now she is classified as a felon.

Stephanie first tries talking with the boyfriend, Eddie Kuntz. Eddie thinks he is God’s gift to women and starts hitting on Stephanie. But she manages to get all the scoop on Maxine’s potential whereabouts, including her family, friends and work addresses.

Even so, Eddie winds up getting invited to dinner at Stephanie’s parent’s house in the burg. (Seems Eddie lost Stephanie’s business card and tried to look her up in the phone book. She wasn’t listed so he called her parent’s number. Grandma Mazur answered the phone, and need I say more?)

Turns out that Eddie gets a note from Maxine via ‘airmail’ - it was attached to a rock thrown through his window. It contains a cryptic message that neither Stephanie or Eddie can decipher. Stephanie decides to let some of her elderly neighbors in her apartment building take a crack at the message. After all, they do crossword puzzles most of the time so they should be able to solve this.

Unfortunately none of them can, but one neighbor refers Stephanie to her nephew who is supposed to be a whiz at solving puzzles. His name is Salvatore Sweet, aka Sally Sweet.