from the article:
"Cook said she got nervous when they weren't back by 12:30 p.m. and started driving around town looking for them. After an hour of searching, she returned to the home. Cook said that Misty Morrissey stopped by after getting off work."
Where did she drive around during that hour? Isn't it a very small town? Did she drive out by the lake between 12:30 and 1:30?
ETA: Also, she saw them on their bikes nearby at 12:15. And then she is nervous at 12:30 so she goes driving around? What happened in that 15 minutes to make her nervous?
She's recalling the past, so her memory of times may not be accurate to the minute.
She has said that the girls usually stayed within sight of the Collins house. This seems to be widely doubted on WS but it could be true. If this was true, then it would be natural for her to feel concerned if she looked outside about 12:20 or 12:25 pm to check on them, didn't see them and they didn't reappear in 5 minutes.
As an example, being on time is very important to me so I am usually there 5 minutes early. If I were even a minute late, my husband would start to worry because he knows I'd call to let him know I was going to be late.
However, the California boy I married is still apparently running on California time after 18 years of marriage to this Iowa gal. If he were an hour late, I doubt I'd even notice it. He's have to be 2-3 hours late before I started to get concerned. Because I love him so, I choose to regard this as a charming quirk... most of the time.
I imagine that when Grandma Cook got into her car, she started out doing a grid search, doing squared off spirals around the last place she saw the girls (behind the Big and Tall store). She may also have stopped at homes where Elizabeth's friends lived.
So far, it sounds like a pretty normal response to missing kids who were old enough to play outside without constant adult supervision. The family gradually became more and more worried, calling in more and more family members to help search, until one person got worried enough to report the girls to the PD.
Lyric being late home a few days previously when she was with her cousin KB may have made Grandma Cook and her mother Misty less likely to call the police immediately. They'd just had the experience where Lyric was out with a cousin and returned late without harm. I wouldn't find it surprising if they were telling themselves and each other "boy, Lyric is really pushing the boundaries, isn't she?" without feeling much more concern than that.
