The logical thing would have been to wait a few hours, then call friends or relatives simply inquiring whether Laci were there, or if they knew where she was.
FBI profiler John Douglas once remarked upon a case where a woman frantically called 911, claiming that her small son had been kidnapped. This occurred right after the time she discovered him missing, and so she immediately conferred suspicion upon herself, because, as Douglas pointed out, kidnapping is the last thing in the world that would occur to a mother under the circumstances--one would normally assume that the child had wandered off, or something far less threatening. Sure enough, the woman had murdered the child and tried to stage a scenario.
Profilers like Douglas are forever pointing out that if you try to stage a crime scene you are bound to fail, primarily because the police have lots of experience with genuine crime scenes, while the average schmuck does not.