Clutches and Curses by Dorothy Howell Page A

your cell phone while driving in Nevada; I didn’t know. I was sure some law-abiding citizen would scream at me from the next lane, or offer a helpful hand gesture, if it was.
    I expected my voicemail box to be loaded with calls from Ty. It wasn’t. The only message was from Marcie, asking me to call her right away. I pulled to a stop at a red light on St. Rose Parkway and punched in Marcie’s number. She picked up immediately.
    â€œAre you sitting down?” she asked.
    No how-are-you, no what’s-up, no oh-my-God-you’re-not-going-to-believe-what-happened. This must be big.
    â€œI just picked up your mail, like you asked,” Marcie said. “And you got . . . something.”
    My spirits lifted. Wow, this must be great. Marcie wouldn’t have called otherwise. I’d probably gotten a refund or rebate on something. Maybe some rich relative had died—which would be tragic, of course—and left me a wad of money. I could use it. My checking account was on life support at the moment.
    â€œIt’s from the IRS,” Marcie said.
    My breath caught. A wave of fear washed over me. Sort of like when you show up at a department store wanting to buy the latest handbag but don’t see any in the display cases.
    â€œWould that be the International Refund Service?” I asked.
    Yeah, okay, I didn’t know if there was such a thing, but there could have been. I mean, I’d been in Europe a few weeks ago, shopping diligently, doing all I could to maintain the international balance of trade. I’d maxed out a significant number of credit cards converting U.S. dollars to pounds and euros and God knows what else. And who knew how that conversion stuff worked, anyway. Maybe they’d realized they’d made a mistake. Maybe they were sending me a massive refund.
    Or maybe I’d really been cursed.
    â€œIt’s from the Internal Revenue Service,” Marcie told me.
    Crap.
    â€œWant me to open it for you?” she asked.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œCome on, Haley, you have to face this.”
    Marcie was right—she’s almost always right about things.
    I hate it when other people are right.
    â€œYou did file your taxes, didn’t you?” Marcie asked.
    I did a quick calculation. I’d filed my taxes electronically on April 14, a full thirty minutes before the deadline—beating my own personal best—and had already received my six hundred dollar refund. That was about six weeks ago. Would the IRS contact me now, after they’d sent me the refund?
    The traffic light changed and I drove forward with the line of cars.
    â€œI’m opening it,” Marcie said. A few seconds passed, then she said, “Did you get a refund this year?”
    â€œYeah,” I said.
    â€œWell, they want it back,” Marcie told me. “Plus penalties and interest. Plus another two grand. Call it three thousand.”
    â€œWhat?”
    I shot across two lanes of traffic. Horns blew. Tires screeched—and I don’t think they were mine.
    Then, like a desert oasis, I spotted a Starbucks.
    â€œI’ll call you back,” I told Marcie, and snapped my phone closed.
    I cut off an SUV and whipped into the parking lot, grabbed my laptop, and rushed inside Starbucks.
    Chocolate had a calming effect on people, didn’t it? I think I read that somewhere. I intended to put that little bit of info to the test—right now.
    The guy behind the counter prepared my grandé mocha frappuccino with whipped cream and extra chocolate syrup—no way would anything smaller get me through a crisis of this magnitude—and I found a seat at a table in the corner.
    Oh my God. How could I owe the IRS three thousand dollars? And, better yet, how could I possibly pay the IRS three thousand dollars?
    I sucked down half of my mocha frappuccino, then forced myself to slow down. While chocolate and caffeine had definitely helped solve a number of problems in the