Even if Quinn knows where the safe is and knows the laptop is normally kept there (which I don't think was the case), the DIKs would still have to search that room to make sure the laptop wasn't there before they assumed it was stolen and must be elsewhere. That leaves a pretty narrow window between the time the DIKs call off searching near the safe and the time they return to figure out who did this.
I'm not saying that would make such a plan impossible. I'm saying it's narrower as just having Camila (et al) distract whatever DIKs are in the room (or heading towards it) while Quinn goes after the safe directly. Plus, that plan has the added benefits of not playing with serious fire AND not getting the DIKs in serious trouble. No matter how much Quinn needs the money, there's no reason for her to settle on a plan that has additional moving parts, higher risk, and massive collateral damage to people she likes (or at least appears to).
That goes triply if she was merely trying to locate the safe. In that case, it's not clear she would even need a distraction at all. I doubt anyone would bat an eye seeing Quinn in the mansion, so she just needs to keep her eyes peeled and maybe move a painting when no one is watching.
The red herring is a venerable trope indeed.
The problem is that based on everything we know, there just
*aren't* any good suspects in this case. The only people with a solid motive (the jocks) don't have the means or much of an opportunity. The people with the best ability to pull it off (a DIK or Quinn) have motivation
not to do it. Wildcards (like Vinny or the nerds) are plausible, but require a lot of speculation because we know very little about them.
So we're stuck in a situation where we can either sit and wait for more information to arrive, or come up with increasingly convoluted theories to explain why unconnected dots are actually part of a subtle line. Naturally, we choose the latter.